The Moving Toyshop.

I was remembering a conversation I had with someone a few years back, regarding a particular season of The Avengers, which was then being repeated on Channel 4. about how exciting and dynamic  and yet undeniably otherworldly  every episode. The arch tone , the clever characterization of all the regulars and how visiting guest actors brought the same level of archness to their performances. Right from the first episode of that particular season Steed and Ms Peel were visiting a remote English village that had a load of nazis living within and underneath it, scheming a return to power. The setting was the quirky remote village, where everyone from the pub regulars to the village blacksmith was eccentric in some way.There was a heightened sense of reality, which was completely necessary in order to make it work. The visual suggestion that you were unlikely to bump into Steed or Ms Peel in your local Tescos. You had to build an almost surreal world in order to allow your hyper real characters do their thing. 

                 That is what I felt like reading this very eccentric crime drama by Edmund Crispin. Containing an archly constructed version of Oxford in order to allow events to flow. I presume, never having visited it I cannot be sure, it felt that way though.it felt that way. as though reality had been tweaked slightly. That said, I could be wrong. It could be an accurate depiction of life beneath its gleaming spires. Edmund Crispin could in fact have been describing an Oxford he walked through every day. A version only he saw. 

                 Anyway, the story begins with wandering, and wondering, poet Richard Cadogan traveling into late night Oxford who comes across the body of a strangled woman on a toy shop. It even sounds like an episode of the Avengers. Yet when he returns with the police not only is there no body, there is no toy shop. thus begins a baffling escapade involving Gervasse Fen, a mercurial professor also drawn to the eccentric and odd murders of his hometown. And so the two men team up to solve the mystery of the disapearing toy shop and the vanished victim. 

                 Its all hugely enjoyable. Part PJ Woodhouse, part Avengers with a dollop of Agatha Christie. It is rife with the most enjoyable literary asides with a pleasing smattering of Gilbert and Sullivan tropes, all seamlessly weaved into the dialogue as Richard Cadogan finds himself sheperded by the slightly barmy but equally charming Gervasse Fen, a professor who takes scant interest in his actual profession.  

                 The Moving Toy Shop is something of a moveable feast.