Richard Cadogan, the poet, is a friend of Gervase Fen, the Oxford professor who solves crimes (just as Philip Larkin, the poet and dedicatee of the book, was a friend of Bruce Montgomery, the Oxford don, who wrote mysteries. So, naturally, when Cadogan gets involved in a murder as he enters Oxford for a holiday, he goes to Fen for help.
The plot is wearily complex and involves a series of heirs to a fortune, each identified by an Edward Lear limerick by the woman who is giving them her fortune because each of them does her some kindness and she doesn’t particularly like the relative who is the main heir. They all will inherit if the main heir fails to return to England and claim the fortune within a given time. Thus we have a motive. The lawyer handling all this decides to murder the main heir, and so do some of the alternates, more successfully.
Fen’s eccentricities and the constant play with language and allusions make the book amusing, as do the activities of those Fen enlists to help him in the investigation.
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