Love Lies Bleeding

First published in 1948, this Gervase Fen mystery is set at Castrevenford, a public school, around Speech Day. Fen, an Oxford professor of English, arrives to find staff intrigue, a missing or dubious Shakespeare manuscript associated with the lost play Love's Labour's Won, and then murder among the masters. The investigation moves through classrooms, a greenhouse that gives the book its floral title, and the nerves of pupils and wives. The tone mixes detection with literary jokes. The book is a comic crime novel, not a study of Shakespeare bibliography and not a school story without a corpse.

Quarter-bound in yellow buckram with red title blocked spine and colour image printed blue paper covers. Blue endpapers printed in dark grey with diagram. Blue slipcase.