[In The Glimpses of the Moon,] Crispin seems to have lost belief in the format. Here, he seems less interested in the murders—three of them, more gory than necessary (compensating for lack of interest?), and since we don't meet the victims alive we aren't much involved—than in setting up a village populated entirely with eccentrics and using it to lambast petty bureaucrats and modern morals.

The best part is a 50-page set-piece that is pure Carry On Crispin: a charge of police cars down a country lane jammed with a motor-cycle rally, a hunt, hunt saboteurs, a herd of cows, the electricity board digging up (and exploding) a pylon—but, incredibly, we don't know why it is so vital that the police get through. Even—perhaps especially—in farce, the motives have to be clear. (p. 27)

Gavin Lyall, "Hard Transplants," in New Statesman (© 1977 The Statesman & Nation...