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The Case of the Gilded Fly


The Case of the Gilded Fly is a detective novel by Edmund Crispin first published in 1944. Crispin's debut novel, it contains the first appearance of eccentric amateur sleuth Gervase Fen, who is Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford. The book abounds in literary allusions ranging from classical antiquity to the mid-20th century.

In the United States, the novel was released under the title, Obsequies at Oxford. Crispin's University acquaintance Philip Larkin described how Bruce Montgomery (Crispin's real name) wrote it during his last year as an Oxford undergraduate: "During the vacation that Easter [1943] he had spent ten days writing, with his J nib and silver pen-holder, a detective story".

Set in Oxford in early October 1940, immediately before the beginning of Full Term, The Case of the Gilded Fly is about the violent death of a young actress found shot in the college rooms of the organist and choirmaster, a young man who, as is generally known, is hopelessly infatuated with her. Considering the impossibility of anyone else having fired the shot, and having no other facts to go on either, the police assume that the young woman has killed herself. Gervase Fen, however, announces quite soon after the discovery of the body that he categorically rules out suicide and that he knows the identity of the murderer. To find proof with which he will be able to convince the police that a murder has been committed, he sets out on an investigation of his own without telling anybody what he knows.

The title of the novel refers to an unusual ring worn by the victim which, as it soon turns out, belongs to somebody else.

Up-and-coming playwright Robert Warner has chosen an Oxford repertory theatre rather than the West End as the venue for the première of his new play, Metromania. He has brought with him Rachel West, his mistress of five years, who is going to be the star of the show. Two other members of the cast are the Haskell sisters—Yseut, who is in her mid-twenties, and her younger half-sibling Helen. While Helen is a quiet beauty, Yseut's sexually promiscuous lifestyle and her condescending way of treating men have gained her many enemies among discarded lovers and jealous female rivals alike, and she has difficulty acknowledging the fact that, about a year ago, it was Robert Warner rather than she herself who ended their brief affair.


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