Remarkable character portraits from Edmund Crispin's Gervase Fen mysteries

[cimorene]

Seen at close quarters, Weaver was not a handsome man: his narrow, slightly equine face was perched on his long neck like a too-heavy flower on a too-slender stem, and the eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses were as small and black as currants in a cake. His smile showed large, discoloured teeth; his body moved with the suppleness of an india-rubber doll; his decent black serge was ostentatiously sabbatical.

-The Long Divorce

It was one of Mrs Flack's most notable characteristics that her laughter had in some fashion got itself detached from her sense of humour, so that it bombinated irrelevantly in an emotional vacuum. Perhaps as a consequence of this, it had developed a regular, mechanical tone, as though Mrs Flack were reading laughter – ha! ha! ha! – aloud from a book: an implausible sound which thanks to existing independently of Mrs Flack's emotional condition had frequently disconcerted funeral-goers and such of Mrs Flack's acquaintances as had tales of woe to purvey.

-The Long Divorce

He was interrupted by a knock on the door, which Furbelow opened. A small, ecstatic man was revealed, bearing a brief-case. He rushed in – there is no other word for it – and beamed at everybody with unconcealed pleasure.

‘Well, here we are,’ he announced, ‘laden with all the gory details. Oh, it’s been a splendid job, I can tell you. So quick! Such neat incisions! Such meticulous tests!’

‘This is Dr Rashmole,’ said Mudge helplessly to the company in general.

‘I’ll be sitting here, I think,’ said Dr Rashmole, seizing a chair with sufficient violence to suggest that he wished to frighten it into compliance and good behaviour. ‘Now, you’ll be anxious to get down to it at once. I have here’ – he fumbled in his brief-case – ‘as well as the PM report, the analyst’s report on the gin – what a livery drink, to be sure – and something about the clothes, which they gave me at the police station to bring along. How do you do?’ he added to Elizabeth.

‘Very well, thank you,’ said Elizabeth faintly.

‘First then’ – Dr Rashmole had got out some type-written sheets – ‘the Cause of Death: dislocation of the second and third cervical vertebrae. That’s the neck,’ he explained charitably. ‘He got it in the neck. Well, well, no time for jests, no time for jests. The usual post mortem appearances – need I define them?’

‘No,’ Sir Richard put in hastily. ‘No.’

-Swan Song

Almost imperceptibly Nicholas Crane stiffened. Then, relaxing again, he produced a gold case from an inside pocket, took a flat cigarette from it, and put it with deliberation into the corner of his mouth. His grey eyes were intent beneath heavy lids; his corn-coloured hair, with its displeasing suggestion of an artificial wave at the front, gleamed where the sun caught it; his body, the body of an athlete run to seed, seemed to droop from his shoulders like a coat on a hanger. His left cheek twitched with what could be the beginnings of a tic douleureux, and when, lighting the cigarette, he curled back his full lips, you could glimpse strong, yellow, irregular teeth.

-Frequent Hearses

She was young, foolish, and clothed with awe-inspiring elaboration.

-Swan Song

Comments

[oracne]

"displeasing suggestion" - wow.

[msilverstar]

Those are cinematically vivid, I'm surprised there hasn't been a movie! Wikipedia says that the TV show from 1964 seems to have been misplaced.

[cimorene]

Well, he didn't write very many novels, from the point of view of trying to adapt them into some kind of serial format like tv shows often are; and also his narrative voice contains a lot of stuff that would be hard to show onscreen.

But that's probably not the real REASON; it's mostly only very successful and well-known detective stories that get adapted for the screen. He probably didn't have enough name recognition for any more afterwards. So many of those midcentury mystery writers faded out of the public memory after their deaths.