Beware of the Trains

PREORDER — Expected release: 01 December 2026. This book is not yet available. Dispatch is subject to supplier availability and publication-date changes.

A collection of 16 short stories from Edmund Crispin featuring his beloved amateur detective, Gervase Fen. Crime fiction at its quirkiest and best.

Who burglarised the train heading for Victoria Station, and whatever became of its conductor?

Did the village idiot or Mrs Foley murder the mean-spirited Edgar Foley, or could the constable be responsible for the devious deed?

Who on Earth will be able to untangle the affair of the disappearing car, the black necktie, and the abortive theft?Enter Gervase Fen, Oxford professor and sometime super-sleuth, an expert at solving cases that baffle even the most astute policemen. These sixteen short classics by a master of the modern detective story will test your crime solving abilities as well; Edmund Crispin has provided all the clues you need to detect the solution, using logic and common sense. Can you meet the challenge?

About the author

Robert Bruce Montgomery was born in Buckinghamshire in 1921, and was a golden age crime writer as well as a successful concert pianist and composer. Under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin, he wrote nine detective novels and forty two short stories, combining farcical situations with literary references and sharply observed characterisation. His professional film scores included the well-known scores for the Carry On series. Montgomery graduated from St. John’s College, Oxford in 1943 and was part of a famous literary circle including Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin. In addition to his reputation as a leader in the field of mystery genre, he was the regular crime-fiction reviewer for the Sunday Times from 1967 and contributed to many periodicals and newspapers and edited science-fiction anthologies. After the golden years of the 1950s he retired from the limelight to live out a hermetic existence in Totnes in Devonshire until his death in 1978.