The Moving Toyshop

⚖The case for it

Crispin isn't hiding the seams. Fen keeps stepping outside the case to comment on it, the plotting leans on lucky timing to move bodies around Oxford, and the legal hook that starts everything is thinner than a real solicitor would allow. Crispin knew all of this. He wanted a bright academic romp with a corpse at its center, and the prose earns the trade: quick, learned, amused at its own cleverness in a way that works. Read this when the grim end of crime fiction has worn you down.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Farce keeps lapping the detection. Fen breaks the fourth wall to joke about his publisher, the chases run on coincidence, and the whole mystery turns on an eccentric will clause that would survive about four minutes in an actual probate court. Delightful, yes; as a fair-play puzzle it barely pretends to try.

— the honest librarian