This was the first of Crispin's Fen novels that I read, about eight years ago. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. I do like Golden Age crime novels, and I thought there was enough there to give his other books a try - and when I read them, I liked them more than I liked this one.

It's a good job I didn't try that exercise now, because re-reading it this week was painful. I don't know whether another eight years of reading Golden Age mysteries has refined my sensibilities, or whether this caught me on a bad week, but I hated it this time round. I found it far too full of itself, loathed the way that the fourth wall was broken, found Fen unbearable as a character, and thought the plot was just ludicrous.

And now I'm not sure whether I want to re-read the others in the series again: I really liked several of them the first time around, and I fear that the combination of Fen, in-jokes and implausibility might mean I wouldn't like them as much now either. It might be better to keep the good memories.