Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Swan Song
    Unavailable
    Swan Song
    Unavailable
    Swan Song
    Ebook247 pages3 hours

    Swan Song

    By Edmund Crispin

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    This playful whodunit featuring an Oxford don and a permanently silenced opera singer is “a splendidly intricate and superior locked-room mystery” (The New York Times).
     
    When an opera company gathers in Oxford for the first postwar production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger, its happiness is soon soured by the discovery that the unpleasant Edwin Shorthouse will be singing a leading role. Nearly everyone involved has reason to loathe Shorthouse, but who amongst them has the fiendish ingenuity to kill him in his own locked dressing room?
     
    In the course of this entertaining adventure, eccentric Oxford professor and amateur sleuth Gervase Fen has to unravel two murders, cope with the unpredictability of the artistic temperament, and attempt to encourage the course of true love.
     
    “One of the last exponents of the classical English detective story . . . elegant, literate, and funny.” —The Times of London
     
    “[Crispin’s] books are fast, fun and smart, their hero charming, frivolous, brilliant and badly behaved.” —New Review
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateDec 1, 2015
    ISBN9781504048668
    Unavailable
    Swan Song
    Author

    Edmund Crispin

    Robert Bruce Montgomery was born in Buckinghamshire in 1921, and was a golden age crime writer as well as a successful concert pianist and composer. Under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin, he wrote 9 detective novels and 42 short stories. In addition to his reputation as a leader in the field of mystery genre, he contributed to many periodicals and newspapers and edited sci–fi anthologies. After the golden years of the 1950s he retired from the limelight to Devonshire until his death in 1978.

    Read more from Edmund Crispin

    Related to Swan Song

    Related ebooks

    Cozy Mysteries For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Fiction

      May 5, 2023

      Fiction
      3 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Corner

      Nov 16, 2022

      A new series of sad, funny and intriguing insights from the great and the good I want to be who I was when I wanted to be who I am now. Marilyn Monroe As God said, and I think rightly… The opening of a speech by Field Marshal Montgomery Working is le

      2 min read

    • Article

      Road To Perdition

      Jun 11, 2022

      Road To Perdition
      4 min read

    • Article

      Oh No

      Jul 1, 2018

      Because past the angel at the gate, oh can turn like that, go under, straight into poetry. Here’s the god’s honest: a moment of calm recently came to me, so close to sleep it was sleep. In my dream I saw a girl whose dark t-shirt read: All is Failure

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Book for the Moment: On Helen Weinzweig’s ‘Basic Black with Pearls’

      Jun 1, 2018

      This post was produced in partnership with Bloom, a literary site that features authors whose first books were published when they were 40 or older. 1. In our current moment, a chorus of “nasty women” has flooded social media with grievances. Unfortu

      5 min read

    • Article

      After Trevor

      Jun 1, 2018

      After Trevor
      7 min read

    • Article

      'Dunbar' Is A Moving, Brutal And Apt Update Of 'King Lear'

      Oct 5, 2017

      For centuries, Shakespeare's tragedy was too painful for audiences; it was performed with an altered happy ending. But Edward St. Aubyn has never flinched at inflicting pain on his readers.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Lifting The Mask Of A Mercurial Master

      Mar 30, 2023

      YOU KNOW HOW THIS BEGINS:We all think we know him: dressing gown; the cigarette holder; the utterly imitable voice, recognisable by even the very worst impression. It has become a cliché to note even in passing what a cliché the cliché has become, be

      4 min read

    • Article

      What Larks With Larkin!

      Jul 27, 2022

      What Larks With Larkin!
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Teenager, Strangers And A Pair Of Apes

      Oct 26, 2023

      PERHAPS AS A FUNCTION OF MY OWN journey through middle age, I have become increasingly interested recently in late work. This is the writing that comes when a writer has passed what blurb-composers call “the peak of their powers”, but at the same tim

      5 min read

    • Article

      Everlasting Lane

      Feb 24, 2022

      SEND FORUM SUBMISSIONS TO THE EDITOR: DRSUTTON@FORTEANTIMES.COM In the summer of 2020, when the first lockdown started to lift, I took up walking again. I was never going to repeat the crazy mile-munching escapades of my youth, like marching to the “

      3 min read

    • Article

      Everlasting Lane

      Feb 24, 2022

      SEND FORUM SUBMISSIONS TO THE EDITOR: DRSUTTON@FORTEANTIMES.COM In the summer of 2020, when the first lockdown started to lift, I took up walking again. I was never going to repeat the crazy mile-munching escapades of my youth, like marching to the “

      3 min read

    • Article

      Sex for Art’s Sake

      Apr 19, 2022

      Sex for Art’s Sake
      7 min read

    • Article

      Oh, Corona

      Jan 1, 2024

      Books The Lights by Ben Lerner Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023 128 pp., $26.00 (hardcover) According to the latest Times article on the qualitative merits of bot art, Ben Lerner has lent excerpts from his new poetry collection to a group of venture c

      7 min read

    • Article

      What Does a ‘Sweeney Todd’ Revival Owe Us?

      Mar 31, 2023

      A well-intentioned new production misses the jugular. The post What Does a ‘Sweeney Todd’ Revival Owe Us? appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Mannered, Pretty 'Upstate' Is Quiet To A Fault

      Jun 7, 2018

      Critic and novelist James Wood has often dinged other writers for what he calls "hysterical realism," but his new novel Upstate — while beautifully written — goes too far in the other direction.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Swansongs And Southern Discomfort

      Oct 27, 2022

      THE BORDERLAND BETWEEN popular fiction and literary fiction is now fertile territory. Once upon a time it was easy to tell them apart. Popular and genre fiction were in small format paper-backs, literary fiction larger: now all have been promoted to

      6 min read

    Reviews for Swan Song

    4/5

    89 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Sheer, unadulterated joy.
    • 2/5
      A music mystery. Gervase Fen is certainly no Nero Wolfe.
    • 3/5
      I was fairly excited to read this book, having just really enjoyed another Edmund Crispin novel. Unfortunately, I rapidly discovered I was actually just rereading the same book.

      I knew that the setting would be the same, and that the theme would be theater people, but I was unprepared for just how similar the two books were.

      - The first few chapters focus on how much everyone hates one particular character.
      - The hated character dies suspiciously.
      - Everyone has a motive; no one has an alibi. Several people announce that they had considered killing the dead person themselves.
      - The police think it is suicide; Gervese Fen thinks it is murder. Everyone tells Fen he should leave well enough alone because the world is better off without the dead person.
      - Fen spends quite a while with a moral dilemma; meanwhile, two couples fall in love and become engaged.
      - One member of the newly engaged couples is also murdered. Everyone is surprised and alarmed.
      - By the end, the murderer(s) is dead, saving Fen from his dilemma.

      I liked the first one enough to give Crispin another shot, so I've got one more book to read. If this one has the same plot, I give up.
    • 4/5
      Another fun outing with one of mystery's most eccentric amateur detectives.
    • 4/5
      It's the first post-war performance of Die Meistersinger, at Oxford, but the lead singer is found hanged in his dressing room. It looks like suicide but he was detested by everyone in the company, and Gervase Fen investigates. The usual cliche characters and unlikely whirlwind romances, but Fen is witty and fun as always. I'm sure if I knew anything about the opera I would have picked up on more of the subtleties.
    • 3/5
      Crime fiction in a Wagnerian setting. Whilst the denouement is certainly clever, the way in which the principal characters are introduced the first few pages is exhilarating.