With Love Lies Bleeding Edmund Crispin establishes himself as our leading exponent of "Third Programme" detection: he is not ashamed to address his readers on the assumption that they are his equals in education and intelligence…. The scene in Love Lies Bleeding is a boys' public school in the Midlands, where on the eve of Speech Day murder takes toll of the Masters' Common Room. The plot relies for mystification on purely logical counterpoint, with red herrings rigorously excluded. The characters carry a certain conviction; the style is light and amusing; and Professor Fen's interludes with a comic bloodhound add even a spice of farce. There is one flaw, however, in the motive: the murderer would never have been able to derive any benefit from his crimes without revealing his identity.

Ralph Partridge, "Detection: 'Love Lies Bleeding'," in The New Statesman & Nation (© 1948 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd...