Frequent Hearses // Sudden Vengeance — Edmund Crispin

Stars, starlets, floozies, and factotums to the film world--Gervase Fen suspects them all . . .

A young actress, Gloria Scott, drowns after throwing herself off Waterloo Bridge. The news sends shock-waves around her film studio where Gervase Fen, Oxford Don and amateur criminologist, just so happens to be working. With help from friend the Inspector Humbleby, the tragic loss of young life leads them to many more dark places. Young Ms. Scott's apartment has been searched, and all signs of her real identity have been removed, and what's more, minutes before Humbleby interrogates her co-workers, one of them, a lecherous cameraman, is poisoned.

Equal parts compelling, witty, and ingenuous, this novel is a classic example of great British detective fiction.

First published in 1950, Frequent Hearses was Edmund Crispin's seventh novel.