Frequent Hearses

Stars, starlets, floozies, and factotums to the film world—Gervase Fen suspects them all.

Oxford Don Gervase Fen is more at home in his ivory tower than in a London film studio, but murder can take place anywhere, and aspiring actress Gloria Scott’s suicide definitely looks like murder.

Fen is at the film studios to advise about a film biography of Alexander Pope. Gloria Scott appears to have had little reason for wanting to kill herself by jumping off Waterloo bridge, but someone has taken great pains to hide Gloria’s real identity, and Gervase Fen’s detective nose begins to twitch. When a lecherous cameraman is poisoned before his very eyes, Fen finds himself “consulting” on a far more familiar matter: murder.