Not his best. Fen is asked to consult on a film about the poet Alexander Pope. He's on the scene when a young actress cast in a minor role is identified as a recent suicide victim. Just as the police begin to investigate, another actor on the film is murdered.

While I enjoy vintage crime books and *loved* the madcap mystery The Moving Toyshop by Crispin, this book was not a great one. The film set minutiae entertains, but Crispin seems tired of his amateur sleuth Fen, and Fen has become a bit of a bore. The secondary characters carry more sympathy and more of the story. I found a few too many sexist sentences off-putting as well.
So, please do read Crispin's Fen stories, but start with an earlier one.

Originally published on my blog here in July 1999.

Out of his habitual Oxford world, Crispin's famous academic Gervase Fen is acting as a literary consultant to a film about Alexander Pope when a young actress who was to take a part in the film suddenly commits suicide. When a man dies at a script conference for the same film, Fen suspects something more sinister than a sudden illness. Tests for poison confirm that his death was indeed a murder, but who committed it? And what connection does it have to Gloria Scott's suicide? The case hinges on the true identity of Gloria, who took that name when she began acting; but no one knows anything of her earlier than two years ago, and someone has taken pains to hide her identity, removing named articles from her flat after her death.

Frequent Hearses is an atmospheric crime novel, leading to a bizarre conclusion chasing a murderer through an ornamental hedge maze. The mystery is presented in a very opaque way, the plot being carefully structured so that the strange goings on mystify the reader until Fen explains them later on.

Not the cleverest of Crispin's mysteries, but it contains some of his most delightful prose.