Swan Song (1947)
This under-rated Crispin is, in fact, one of the best of the lot, with its skilful depiction of an operatic background ("There are few creatures more stupid than the average singer…"); the depth of characterisation (on one hand, the humour created by 'the Master' and his domineering paramour Beatrix Thorn—"in the flesh", as Fen introduces her; and on the other, the pathetic love of Judith Haynes); the humour, caused by ludicrous similes and Fen's outrageous unorthodoxies, especially the scene in the chemist's shop; and the ingenuity of the murder plot—very clever misdirection, even if the gimmick is highly improbable, and the motive weak. All of these, along with Crispin's idiosyncratic cameos of minor characters such as Wilkes (sadly his last appearance, excepting a minor off-page role in The Long Divorce) and the burglar, all go to indicate one thing: Edmund Crispin was not a writer of detective stories. He was a novelist.
Note that the book is Crispin's first straight murder mystery since The Case of the Gilded Fly; and that there are similarities in the plot to T.C.O.T. Gilded Fly and to John Dickson Carr's The Three Coffins.
Times Literary Supplement review: