13: The Moving Toyshop

A book by Edmund Crispin

I love magic.

Stuff like this:

And this:

And this:

That feeling of wonder and incredulity at a trick done well is genuinely magical, even if the trick itself isn’t. Often the best way to ruin the magic, though, is to discover how it was pulled off, because very rarely is the ingenuity worthy of the trick itself. You are often left feeling disappointed that, like most things, what makes a magic trick work well is a significant amount of hard work and preparation on the part of the performer.

And so to Edmund Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop, a murder mystery/detective novel published in 1946. The set-up is superb: famed poet Richard Cadogan, on arriving late in Oxford, discovers the body of a dead woman in a toyshop, but when he returns with the police, the body has disappeared, as has the toyshop. In the absence of any assistance from the police, Cadogan turns to an old university friend, Gervase Fen, now an eccentric Oxford professor and, crucially, amateur sleuth.

What follows is terrific fun. There is plenty to unpick along the way, including key clues based on Edward Lear limericks, and Cadogan and Fen are a well-matched pair. Their absurd encounters with a varied cast of quirky characters are eminently entertaining. Meanwhile, Crispin (real name Robert Bruce Montgomery) gets enjoyably meta at times and surprisingly poignant at others. Fen spends the beginning of Chapter Six “making up titles for Crispin”—Murder Stalks the University and The Blood on the Mortarboard are two of his suggestions—and Cadogan’s musings on the writing process are genuinely lovely.

However, I am not sure if the The Moving Toyshop deserves its spot in the pantheon of great novels from the golden age of crime fiction. No lesser luminary than P. D. James named it one of her five most riveting crime novels of all time, and last year The Sunday Times included it in their list of the 100 best crime novels and thrillers since 1945. For me, though, it was let down by the reveal. Obviously I won’t spoil it here, but let’s just say the magic of the set-up was lost somewhat in the clunkiness of the explanation.

On the Waterstones website, Crispin is described thusly: “As inventive as Agatha Christie [and] as hilarious as P.G. Wodehouse.” For a truly accurate assessment of The Moving Toyshop, maybe just add a couple of “almost”s. Being almost as inventive as Agatha Christie and almost as hilarious as P.G. Wodehouse is hardly a criticism, though. This is a charming romp with plenty of laughs. Chuck it in your bag for a holiday expecting only that and it is unlikely to disappoint.