Episode 116: STAY MYSTERIOUS: The Moving Toyshop Review

SPEAKERS
Sarah Harrison, Carolyn Daughters

Sarah Harrison  00:12

Welcome to Tea, Tonic and Toxin, the only book club and podcast dedicated to exploring mysteries chronologically from Edgar Allan Poe to the present, we’re discussing the best mysteries and thrillers ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s most talented contemporary mystery and thriller writers. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters  00:33

And I’m your host, Carolyn Daughters. We aim to educate, entertain, and reignite interest in exceptional and often overlooked authors who shaped the genre. Check us out at teatonicandtoxin.com and on our socials to find tons of great content and take part in the conversation. We love hearing from listeners, and we’re excited you’re joining us on our journey through the history of mystery.

Carolyn Daughters 00:57

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Sarah Harrison  01:50

Carolyn, what would you do if you discovered a murdered woman in a toyshop, summoned the police, and returned to find that the toyshop itself no longer existed. That is the wonderfully improbable mystery at the center of Edmund Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop. The book combines golden age detection with literary jokes, a plenty, eccentric academics, wild chases, and a strong sense that almost anything can happen in wacky and wild Oxford. Today, we’re going to do a new kind of discussion — it’s The Moving Toyshop review as part of our Stay Mysterious series.

Carolyn Daughters  02:32

That is so true, and I want to set up The Moving Toyshop review. Sarah, this is a new segment that we’ve been experimenting with called Stay Mysterious. What do our listeners need to know here?

Sarah Harrison  02:38

Almost nothing, except that we’re not going to spoil it, folks. These are short segments. If you didn’t look at the time, they’re not our usual 45 to 50-minute episodes. We’re going to keep it short and sweet for books that you’re interested in, but would like to know a little bit more. I know a lot of our listeners amazingly pick and choose the books they’re going to read, and so this might help you make a decision. Hopefully, pro. I think if you listen to many of these, we always are loving the books.

Carolyn Daughters  03:14

I’ll set the book up, but we’re going to stay mysterious in our The Moving Toyshop review. We’re going to talk about a few things about the book, but we’re going to keep true to the theme here and not spoil anything. So it’s going to be a fun read for you. The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin was published in 1946. Edmund Crispin was the pen name of composer and writer Bruce Montgomery. The Moving Toyshop starts with Richard Cadogan. He’s a poet. He’s super bored. He’s feeling creatively stale. He keeps making references to being prematurely middle age. He wants adventure, so naturally, naturally he goes to Oxford.

Sarah Harrison  03:50

I think he’s exactly middle aged, though. He might feel premature, but his age would probably disagree. Would bear out the actual middle age. This reality friend.

Carolyn Daughters  04:02

He arrives at Oxford for his adventure, and enters an abandoned toyshop. It’s unlocked. He walks in. He discovers, as most people would in an abandoned toyshop, a body. Well, right after he sees this body, someone knocks him unconscious, and then the real adventure begins. He turns to his friend Gervase Fen.

Sarah Harrison  04:27

Ah, yes, Gervase Fen. Tell us more in this The Moving Toyshop review.

Carolyn Daughters  04:28

He’s an eccentric Oxford professor of English language and literature who also happens to solve crimes. And they’re trying to figure out what’s going on because they go back the next day, and the toyshop has disappeared.

Sarah Harrison  04:46

I gotta say, I don’t know how you feel, but I actually really related to Richard Cadogan. “Cah-doe-gan” is how our guest David Whittle said it, who. He should know, as he is British. So Richard could dig in. He just wants to have an adventure, and he sees something odd, and he opens the door and finds it unlocked. And frankly, I do that thing a lot when I’m feeling like I want an adventure.

Carolyn Daughters  05:21

You’re trying random doors to see if one of them is unlocked.

Sarah Harrison  05:25

And then some, Carolyn. I just Nate and I just had a little trip together this weekend, and as soon as I am not around two small children, my brain starts wandering to all of the funny adventures that I have had when we’re just like, what if we? Could we climb this fire escape? Could we climb this? Can I slip through this crack in the window? Like I think, I think I could manage it. So I was pleased to see that even back in what the 40s, right?

Carolyn Daughters  06:00

1946.

Sarah Harrison  06:02

That elderly poets were having the same sorts of adventures.

Carolyn Daughters  06:08

Well, middle-aged poets, Sarah. If you were seeking adventure, would you think of Oxford? Would that be at the top of your list? That threw me a little bit. I was like, Oxford? First of all, I’ve been to Oxford. It’s amazing and love it. Recommend it. However, as part of The Moving Toyshop review, I would say it’s not where I would go if I were seeking adventure.

Sarah Harrison  06:34

I haven’t been to Oxford. I mean, it wouldn’t be top of my list. But after reading some of these different mystery authors who seem to return in their mind to the glory days of Oxford, like not only would I not go, but it seems like a different culture. He’s like, well, I could just sleep in my old college. Well, I can’t sleep in my old. And he shows up at the office of this professor, maybe be maybe because of the mystery. But I was. They start with a conversation of like how he’s insulted his poetry publicly, so they have an antagonistic relation. Like, I definitely don’t go to my alma mater and plan to sleep there and chat up professors for fun.

Carolyn Daughters  07:18

Back in my 20s when I was traveling in Europe, my friend and college roommate and I got off a train. We did an all-night train. One of those. Oh, we don’t want to pay for a bed. We just want to we’ll sit up and save so much money. Then you arrive in the morning and you are just you’re shot. You were so tired, so we walked to this, wandered around in a haze, an exhausted haze. Found a university, walked into the university, which students going back and forth, and we found a hallway with people coming up, and we just slept in it for like an hour or two.

Sarah Harrison  08:01

Well, okay. So Carolyn does in fact go to university.

Carolyn Daughters  08:07

I do, but that where we were, and I’m trying to think. I think it was Hanover, Germany. It was not our destination. It was en route. We were heading to Berlin, and we had gone. We were hopping around. We were in Amsterdam, and we’re going all around, and ended up in, I believe it was Hanover, and we’re like, where? Oh, so we first, first we tried to sleep on the lawn of a park, which is a no-no in Germany. You don’t walk on the beautiful lawn. You don’t lay on the beautiful lawn. You look at the beautiful lawn from the bench. So we figured, okay, where can we hide in plain sight without spending any money that we don’t have? We’re like a university, and we went to the university and slept like logs.

Sarah Harrison  08:54

Success, successfulness. I love it. Well, and I don’t think we can do any stay mysterious segment without first talking about why this book made the list. Why did we select Edmund Crispin? Sounds frankly like a fascinating person. I think still maybe well-known in Britain, not in America. Tell us as part of our Stay Mysterious The Moving Toyshop review: How did how did this book make the list?

Carolyn Daughters  09:23

That’s a great question. We’re always putting all the books on trial because if we didn’t pick and choose, we would probably still be in like the 1890s, which is not a terrible thing, mind you. We’re not in a rush, and you can look at our book list each year and realize we’re not in a rush, but it’s one of the great impossible opening situations in mystery fiction, and it’s fairly well known in mystery fiction for this opening in a toyshop that has a real sinister feel, which I think is interesting, and the premise of. The toyshop existing, and then the next day you go back and open the door and you look in, and there’s a grocer’s there. Where did this toyshop go? Gervase Fen is also considered in detective fiction quite memorable. He’s very eccentric, and a lot of readers enjoy him. And the book is extremely comic. It is so comic, in fact, that at various times I just had to let loose and say, if I try to figure out who the 10 people are running down the street, I’m gonna. I’ll spend all day trying to map this out. Just enjoy the ride. It’s madcap.  From my perspective in The Moving Toyshop review, It’s farcical at times, and if that going in and you embrace it, I think it’s a really enjoyable read.

Sarah Harrison  10:52

It was very wacky, and I like this question here in the notes. What makes Gervase Fen more absurd than detectives such as Hercule Poirot, who’s another one we’ve read quite a few of his books. What’s your take on him? Obviously, he is more absurd.

Carolyn Daughters  11:13

Yes.

Sarah Harrison  11:14

What makes him so?

Carolyn Daughters  11:17

He’s really, really quirky. So Hercule Poirot is quirky. Don’t get me wrong. He’s super quirky, but Gervase Fen is driving around in his crazy car, practically hitting every single person who makes the mistake of walking in front of his car. He gets in these madcap situations, and you get this sense that this is his day to day life. Like I’m going to pick up another Edmund Crispin book and read another Gervase Fen book, and there’s going to be more madcap insanity happening. So I think he is written more deliberately comic, whereas Poirot is written more deliberately quirky, if that makes sense. What are your thoughts?

Sarah Harrison  12:06

He is definitely more absurd. It’s to me absurdity purpose. I think you’re right. Poirot has his quirks and can be amusing even. But Gervase Fen, he’s actively cracking jokes. He’s making literary references. He has this dry wit. He’s like pretty mean. Ah, yes, really mean but really funny comments to characters in The Moving Toyshop  as they go along. He’s like a devil may care professor, whatever that means, but I really liked him as a character. I would definitely read more of his books, but he is funny on purpose.

Carolyn Daughters  12:54

And it’s a university setting, which you and I have talked about. Okay, train mysteries that should be a sub-genre, and maybe it is. Like university mysteries should also, and maybe it should be a subgenre. Like we did Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers. We’re about to do The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis. These books set at universities are really interesting in their own way. I think because it feels like an isolated, sequestered community, and you get a sense that there’s not a whole lot of a world outside it, and I think that makes the story really feel like you are enter entering a new world. So, if Oxford isn’t my top choice for an adventure, I would say as part of The Moving Toyshop review that entering this Oxford world really did feel like I was entering a new world.

Sarah Harrison  13:53

Well, let me ask you this: If you were going to make the case in The Moving Toyshop review as to why our listeners should read this book. What would your case consist of? Is it Gervase Fen? Is it the humor? Is it Edmund Crispin’s uniqueness perhaps in in being a double-lifed author?

Carolyn Daughters  14:25

We’re outside the official Golden Age of Mystery in 1946, but so many books of the 1940s are really still that golden age is living on in the structure and the way the stories are told and the serious nature of the books. Edmund Crispin, he’s just flip about it all. He’s like, I’m gonna have fun writing this, and you get the sense he does, and I’m gonna make sure the reader’s having fun when they’re reading it, and. It feels. It felt to me feels very different than a lot of the other books, and in fact, I was even thinking about this. This year so far, our books have felt really like every single one different. Home Sweet Homicide, The Ministry of Fear, Death Comes as the End, and The Moving Toyshop. I mean, it really feels like these authors are putting their personal stamp on the book. They don’t feel at all necessarily even of the same timeframe. They are, but I love that about them because it to me it suggests that the authors are experimenting a little. They’re getting creative. I would spend more time with Gervase Fen. I think he’s quirky, interesting guy, super literary. They’re playing all kinds of literary games, which I thought was fun. Not every reader. I’ll say as part of The Moving Toyshop review that that won’t be up every reader’s alley, but it’ll make you want to research all the literary references, which are strewn throughout the book.

Sarah Harrison  16:08

Yes.

Carolyn Daughters  16:10

How did you feel about the literary references?

Sarah Harrison  16:14

I felt like I needed to get a lot more literary, but it honestly reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe. When I was reading “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” by Edgar Allan Poe, I thought to myself, this guy’s word usage is so beyond.

Carolyn Daughters  16:32

Yes.

Sarah Harrison  16:33

I’m wondering, did everyone talk like this back then? Did we lose so many words? When you lose words, you lose capacities for thought, and I think even reading Edmund Crispin here, I started boxing out casual uses of words that I do not know what they mean. So I was gonna. I’m thinking still about publishing these little social media dictionary definitions as some of our posts, but I enjoy that about an author. When you make me feel dumb and I don’t know the words you might be using, I feel like oh, this is excellent. I can learn more new words. I can learn different ways of thinking. I do feel like I need to start looking up all the references, which could be its own graduate thesis. Honestly, there are so many things referenced in this.

Carolyn Daughters  17:30

Listeners, if you’re looking for a graduate thesis, we’re trying to be very helpful here. You could do The Moving Toyshop review or a review of all the Edmund Crispin books. Just pull out the literary references.

Sarah Harrison  17:42

100%. I think we need an annotated version. We’ve talked to a couple annotated authors. This is the perfect one.

Carolyn Daughters  17:50

Yes.

Sarah Harrison  17:51

If you want to find it, you would probably 10x the size of this book if you went through and annotated it. So it’s a really good candidate, but I agree. I do feel like in this period, our authors are almost branching out. As we’ve gone through the history of mystery, and you can see all the tentacles of sub-genres forming.

Carolyn Daughters  18:19

This felt more like an entertainment than probably. I’m trying to think. Home Sweet Homicide had a little bit of that entertainment value as well. So, from a tone standpoint, if you liked Home Sweet Homicide, and I would I would be shocked if you read it and didn’t enjoy it because it’s amazing. As part of The Moving Toyshop review, I’d say you would probably also enjoy this book.

Sarah Harrison  18:46

This would be definitely. Humor isn’t necessarily the predominating trait of mystery, but of the books we’ve read this year, those would be the two funniest. I always enjoy the funny books for sure. Who doesn’t like humor?

Carolyn Daughters  19:04

Agreed. You have a murdered woman, you have a vanished shop, you have this eccentric professor, this frustrated poet, and it all takes place at Oxford. So like, what’s not to love? I really enjoyed it.

Sarah Harrison  19:21

Well, there’s one more connection here that is not to a funny book that maybe we want to highlight, and that’s The Ministry of Fear. Richard Cadogan draws that reference in. We won’t give away the scene, but there is a fair or a fete, as you prefer.

Carolyn Daughters  19:43

Yes.

Sarah Harrison  19:43

We’re sharing this as part of our spoiler-free The Moving Toyshop review.

Carolyn Daughters  19:45

That he describes as being like right out of a Graham Greene novel. He’s pointing to The Ministry of Fear, which would have been published only a couple years earlier. It’s a very contemporary reference. I really think Edmund Crispin thinks very highly of his readers. They would get these references.

Sarah Harrison  20:12

That makes total sense. From where I’m sitting, it feels like it’s making so many historical references, but from where Edmund Crispin is sitting, he’s making pop culture references there. It’s nice that he chose some books that we know what they are.

Carolyn Daughters  20:33

We appreciate because that was a very insider comment that I don’t think every reader at the time would have even gotten, whereas we probably missed. I know I missed several other literary references, but I was taking notes and like researching some of it, and I like the way Edmund Crispin, like Edgar Allan Poe, just presumes that his reader is educated, smart enough to get it, or you know, curious enough to figure it out.

Sarah Harrison  21:05

As part of The Moving Toyshop review, the other thing I would say that I loved about this book that felt very new to me was breaking the fourth wall.

Carolyn Daughters  21:13

Yes.

Sarah Harrison  21:14

Gervase Fen did a few times and actually calls Edmund Crispin out the author and thinking about titles for him; those scenes were some of my favorite. So that was new and interesting.

Carolyn Daughters  21:26

Yes.

Sarah Harrison  21:27

It’s certainly something that’s much more common today. But all in all, I say obviously it’s a book to read because we put it on our list. But here’s some reasons why we think you should put it on yours. Do we want to talk a little bit about our guest that we got for the two episode?

Carolyn Daughters  21:46

Yes, introduce our situation for The Moving Toyshop review.

Sarah Harrison  21:50

David Whittle was our guest, and he’s actually Edmund Crispin’s biographer and himself a composer. So musical scholar, educator, and the acclaimed biographer of real name Bruce Montgomery. Okay, so Edmund Crispin was his pseudonym, a classically trained musician and longtime director of music. David earned his Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham with research focused on Montgomery’s life and work. We have his biography of Edmund Crispin on our Amazon page, and I believe on our bookshop.org store as well. It is a little hard to get, so we recommend that if you want to learn more, you get it. And David obviously was a wealth of knowledge about Edmund Crispin.

Carolyn Daughters  22:38

Yes.

Sarah Harrison  22:39

Oxford actually, where he did a lot of the research, so truly a treasure trove, and we highly recommend those conversations.

Carolyn Daughters  22:48

And another thing that I’ll just quickly say is, it’s easy when you’re going back in time and trying to focus on the history of mystery to stick to the Agatha Christie’s and the Dorothy Sayers, we’re really making sure our coverage is quite broad, and we want to bring in Helen Eustis, The Horizontal Man, which is coming up, and we want to want to bring in Edmund Crispin, and Christianna Brand, Green for Danger. Like these authors were important then; they’re important now. They could be forgotten in this historical review, and we want to make sure they’re not.

Sarah Harrison  23:27

Carolyn, do you want to preview The Horizontal Man for our next upcoming book club selection?

Carolyn Daughters  23:35

That’s a great idea. Helen Eustis is the author of The Horizontal Man and it’s a psychological mystery set at an Ivy League women’s college. So, an English professor is found murdered. This happens on page two. This is not a spoiler, folks. This is on page two, and suspicion falls on a troubled student. So, did this student do it? Did someone else do it? How are we going to find out? There is no formal detective in the story. We have a couple students, male and female, who play a little bit of the role of detectives, but we get a lot of first-person points of view from various characters who piece together the crime and try to figure this out along the way. So it’s really, really, really interesting and really well done. I’m here trying to stop my window from slamming because of wind and ended up knocking something else over, which is basically how I work.

Sarah Harrison  24:46

I think it was appropriate, and the window deserved every bit of it. If you want to see Carolyn slam her window as part of The Moving Toyshop review.

Sarah Harrison  24:55

Patreon subscribers do see our Stay Mysterious episodes in all of it. Video glory commercial free. Otherwise, look for it. We’ll start releasing all of our Stay Mysterious episodes everywhere you get your podcasts.

Carolyn Daughters  25:10

Yes, it’s awesome. We appreciate this opportunity to go spoiler free, and we hope you do, too.

Carolyn Daughters

Thanks so much for listening to this spoiler-free, STAY MYSTERIOUS episode: The Moving Toyshop review. Please help other mystery lovers find our show by subscribing or with a like, a share, or a rating. It’s totally free, and it means the world to us.

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Carolyn Daughters

Thanks for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. Until next time, Stay Mysterious.