"Anonymous letters?" said Mr. Datchery. "What anonymous letters?"
His tone betrayed no more than a civil interest such as any strangers, encountering a case of this sporadic affliction, might be expected to show; but if Penelope had been less preoccupied...she might have seen that his pale blue eyes narrowed at the words, and that he began to follow what she said with a new alertness...and Penelope said:
"Oh, didn't you know about them? They've been going on for two or three weeks now."
That little exchange of pleasantries between the rather mysterious Mr. Datchery and a young woman named Penelope Rolt, helps set the scene for a mystery which begins with anonymous letters and moves quickly to murder. It is another outing for the incomparable Gervase Fen, who remains one of my favorite amateur detectives. The book is called The Long Divorce, by Edmund Crispin, originally published in 1951. It is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.
The little English town of Cotten Abbas is being plagued by someone who is sending anonymous poisoned pen letters to people in the town. Letters of this type usually accuse the recipient either of some crime or of some major breach of morality. If there is any degree of truth in the letters, they can be deadly, and they would appear to be the reason behind at least one death in Cotten Abbas. The mysterious Mr. Datchery, newly arrived in Cotten Abbas, rather clearly knows more than he is saying about the letters and their source. But it will become a case of murder that will puzzle Crispin’s detective, Oxford Professor Gervase Fen, though he’s not even mentioned to us by name until more than two thirds of the way into the novel. It's a good thing that he’s on hand too, as the evidence looks remarkably black against one of the town's two doctors, Dr. Helen Downing, the sympathetic heroine of the book. It would appear that someone is trying to frame her for a murder that is most likely connected to the poisoned pen letters. And that someone is doing so quite effectively until Fen comes along.
I don’t want to say much more about the plot – it’s quite typical of Crispin, enormously complicated, between the poisoned pen letters, the suicide by a recipient of those letters, and the murder of a young teacher which – according to the evidence – could only have been committed by Helen Downing. And the facts seem to be so damning that even the investigating police officer – who has fallen in love with Helen Downing – finds himself suspecting her of murder.
But all of this – and a great deal more – is contained in a book written, as all of Crispin’s were written, with wit and humor – and horror, often within the same chapter, or even the same page. Crispin’s characters – as suspects or investigators or simply as extras or walk-ons in a given scene – are largely unforgettable, both good and bad. And that certainly goes for Gervase Fen as well. The Long Divorce is available both in print and as an e-book, and it’s certainly worth your time and energy to get a copy.
UPDATED to fix link to the audio review. Hat tip to Christophe Van den Bulte for catching my error.
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