BURIED FOR PLEASURE:
GLIMPSES OF THE MOON, AND MORTALITY  

Edmund Crispin, sadly, died in 1978, thus leaving the world without further reminiscences of Gervase Fen. Inevitably, given that by then Fen was an octogenarian, any further memoirs would have been dated, but could they have pertained to Fen's Secret Agent period?

Fen's last recorded case was in the sleepy Devon village of Aller. Here, in the affair dubbed by Crispin as The Glimpses of the Moon, we get a revealing glimpse also of the ageing (aged, even?) Fen. And, in truth, age did but wither him little. He still retained his ruddy complexion and his brown hair, his critical mind — realising that Crispin would resort to the old-fashioned way of using his sighting of himself in a mirror to describe him to the world — and sufficient agility to climb trees.

And, though he played a minor, and inactive, role in the uncovering of the killers of Mavis Trent, George Luckraft and Routh, it was to him that Inspector Widger, mindful of that near legendary case concerning a toyshop in Oxford, turned for help, and was rewarded.