Beware of the Trains (Gervase Fen Mystery)

by Edmund Crispin

How acute are your powers of perception? Do they begin to match those of Gervase Fen, Oxford don and sleuth supreme?

First published in 1953, Beware of the Trains is a collection of sixteen short mysteries. Fen must link a missing train conductor to the murder of a thief, decipher cryptograms to solve the death of a cipher expert and puzzle out a locked-room mystery on Boxing Day.

Erudite and complex, these Gervase Fen cases are classic crime at its finest: plot, atmosphere and anecdote, bound together by Edmund Crispin’s inimitable wit and charm.

• ISBN10: 1448217466
• ISBN13: 9781448217465
• Publish Date: 15 November 2018 (first published 18 May 1972)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 15 September 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Imprint: Bloomsbury Reader
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 176
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

I've read a couple of Gervaise Fen full length novels and enjoyed them quite a bit, but I think I might like the short stories even better.   That wonderful, dry English humor: check! Well plotted mysteries: check! Fair play plotting: check! (although as Crispin cites in his foreword, 4 of them require a bit of specialised knowledge that result in them not really being fair-play)   While the book is touted as a collection of Fen short stories, a few at the back did not involve Fen at all.  One of these, The Evidence for the Crown, might have been my favorite simply because Crispin led me so elegantly through the story that I didn't see the obvious right in front of me.  Conversely, it was also a non-Fen story that was my least favorite.  The Golden Mean just was unsatisfying and felt incomplete.   There's just something about the style of story construction that reminds me of the Holmes short stories; Fen is no Holmes to be sure, but there's a similarity in the efficiency of the writing.  Unless you can count the bantering sass between Fen and Humbleby as character development, these stories are wholly plot driven.   I have another collection of Crispin shorts and I'm really looking forward to them.