Frequent Hearses

Frequent Hearses
1958 Penguin edition
AuthorEdmund Crispin
LanguageEnglish
SeriesGervase Fen
GenreDetective
PublisherGollancz
Dodd, Mead (US)
Publication date
1950
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint
Preceded byBuried for Pleasure 
Followed byThe Long Divorce 

Frequent Hearses is a 1950 detective novel by the British author Edmund Crispin. It is the seventh in his series of novels featuring Gervase Fen an Oxford University professor and amateur detective. Published during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, it is set in the British film industry where Fen has been employed as a historical advisor on The Unfortunate Lady, a biopic of the English poet Alexander Pope. The title is taken from a line of Pope's Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, "on all the line a sudden vengeance waits, and frequent hearses shall besiege your gates". It was published in the United States by Dodd, Mead the same year under the alternative title Sudden Vengeance.