Edmund Crispin has been basking in public praise lately; and his fame must have reached the film industry, judging from the internal evidence in Frequent Hearses, where the scene of events is a film studio on the outskirts of London…. [Crispin] handles the plot with his customary adroitness, but there is something missing from the stock pantomime properties. For one thing, where are the usual comic accessories? No homing pig? No mock heroic bloodhound? Even Fen's car seems to go when it's asked, and no longer backfires uproariously; while Fen himself has dwindled in boisterous exuberance. The only frills that persist (and with those we could easily dispense) are the literary quotations. Fen may be Eng. Lit. Professor at Oxford, but is that any reason why a casual young lady should quote steadily from her repertoire while chasing a murderer in a maze? Altogether Frequent Hearses runs on...