Another great Fen book. This one not so much for the mystery (eh... not that great) but for the setting and characters. Small town England (Sanford on Morvel?) with the homey inn, the escaped lunatic, daffy (haunted) clergyman and a local rich socialist who wants to do away with fancy formality. Fen runs for (and wins) a seat to parliament allowing for political jibes and odd speeches. Pleasant Jane Persimmons is the target of a murder attempt (fortunately saved and reunited with her long lost family).

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2021/05/2021056-buried-for-pleasure-edmund.html ( )

Gervase Fen, Oxford professor and sleuth, here “standing” (U.S.,running) for Parliament in towns leaning Conservative but equally divided with Labour. His race turns in interesting and odd results, when we learn about the Chiltern Hundreds and impossibility of resigning once elected. Fen’s speeches grow almost crazed, part of the theme, since in this novel young Lord Sanford gives his great house to the government, who turned Sanford Hall to an insane asylum. One escaped inmate, an “exhibitor” (US, indecent exposure) may be the third craziest character here, after the Fish pub owner Mr Beaver and others. Even the village rector credits poltergeists.

Twice our one daily visit to a pub, though often merely mineral water for those driving cars. Scotland Yard gets involved after the second murder, a smaller man Humbleby who after the striking of the church clock quotes “Time’s hurrying chariot…unhappily driving toward something less agreeable than a coy mistress”(106). This from Andrew Marvell’s most famous poem; Marvell I focused my doctoral dissertation on, This Critical Age, about poetry criticism in verse before Dryden turned it to prose. (My book is in four German and American universities.)

Attempts at murder range from knives to hypodermic to a box of chocolates. Continuing
throughout are amusing passages, like “The Civil Service is a body whose mistakes are made so thoroughly and definitively the they can only be rectified by a procedure equally searching and elaborate”(122). Profound comparison of a politician to “an actor whose miming is so plausible that the emotions he presents come to be regarded as real and not artificial” (142, see below). The rector of the local church feels his charwoman “greatly overestimates my importance in the eyes of the Devil, wh no doubt has better uses of his courtesans than to assign them so regularly to me”(156).

Crispin’s conclusion (1949) anticipates our US president Trumpster. Fen’s last speech says political apathy is better than zealotry, though zealots often win. Their whole motive power of political obsession derives from “the monosyllable hate…Endemic envy and hatred, masquerading as a public-spirited interest in politics…are producing [terrible effects] in this country”(188, 190).

*pseudonym for Robert B Montgomery, composer (including for film). ( )

Professor Gervase Fen takes up politics and stands as an Independent candidate in the Sanford Angelorum by-election. Then he meets a policeman friend investigating a case of blackmail and poisoning undercover. And then the friend himself is murdered. Of course, for Fen, investigating murder is much more fun than politics.

The mystery is as entertaining as usual and the political satire is still spot on in these days of Brexit and the US Presidential elections. ( )

I always enjoy the antics of Gervase Fen and this story has plenty of antics, any more would be too many. Fen Is staying at an inn named Fish which has no fishing or peace and quiet or even much else to recommend it. He has decided to run for parliament but in the end finds solving murders more to his liking. I enjoyed the complete reading experience because this book is a lovely quality trade paperback with high grade paper. A keeper. ( )