Forgotten Book - Fatal Venture

If I'd read Fatal Venture as a teenager, I wouldn't have been impressed. I tried Freeman Wills Crofts at the age of thirteen or fourteen and found the books a struggle. I gave up at least one of them long before the end. There simply wasn't enough pace and excitement for me. And this novel certainly moves at a stately pace. Yet, a lot older and a bit wiser these days, I appreciated its merits when I read it a while back.

The story was published in 1939, but you'd never guess that war was looming. There is brief mention of a foreign envoy, but no hint of international tensions. On the contrary, the government's chief preoccupation seems to be its moral panic over a floating casino which offers cruises around the British Isles, just outside the three mile limit. A good deal of space is devoted to the plans to set up the casino business, and this is relevant to the plot, but people less interested in business life than me might find reading this part of the story a bit of a chore. Murder isn't done until we're almost half-way through the book.

In reading this novel, I was interested to try to figure out how Crofts wrote it. The central plot twist involves a pretty simple idea that he might easily have used in a short story. As you might guess, it concerns an alibi. It's clear that he took a dim view of gambling and this issue adds texture to the story, though he never gets under the skin of the gambler's obsession or indeed of the terrible consequences of gambling addiction. Crofts loved to travel, and the extensive travelogue aspects of the story, although again relevant, aren't conducive to pace. But I must admit that they reminded me that I'd like to go on a cruise of the British Isles - I gather that they have become increasingly popular, post-pandemic, though gambling isn't a component of the offer to tourists.

Crofts added depth and interest to the story with a structural device that enabled him to weld his components into a single entity and make a full-length novel out of them. The book is composed of two parts: pre- and post- police investigation. We see the establishment of the floating casino business through the eyes of Morrison, a young man who becomes closely involved. Morrison is quite likeable, but his occasional stupidity, although necessary to make the story work, is slightly irritating. Then - even though the crime is not committed in England - Inspector French comes on to the scene, and we know that eventually he'll get his man - or woman. There's even a bit of 'had-I-but-known' stuff to encourage readers to keep going: 'Though neither of them knew it, their tentative arrangement was to prove the most momentous either had ever made', for example. I think some readers will find this a minor work, and rather slow-moving, but I enjoyed it.

Forgotten Book - Murder in Blue

Murder in Blue, published in 1937 by Hodder & Stoughton, was the first detective novel of Clifford Witting. It was an auspicious debut, proclaimed by Hodder as "a first-class detective story...about the murder of a policeman". It's interesting to compare the first edition of this book with first editions written by debut authors today. Now, readers are always presented with information about the author. Publishers are keen, almost to the point of obsession sometimes, to focus on an author's "platform", i.e. the means by which, it's thought, he or she can attract readers. It was very different in 1937. We are not told a word about Witting.

So who was he? I don't possess a lot of biographical information but I do know that Clifford Witting (1907-68) was educated at Eltham College and worked for many years for Lloyds Bank. He enjoyed a long career as a crime novelist, spanning 27 years, but was much less prolific than many others who started during the Golden Age. In that time he published sixteen novels. Quite possibly, like Cyril Hare for instance, his day job reduced his literary output. But lack of productivity is no bad thing if it is matched by a corresponding increase in quality. He wrote accomplished traditional mysteries and in 1958 he was elected to membership of the Detection Club, a sign of the esteem in which he was held by fellow practitioners.

Nick Fuller writes about Witting on the excellent gadetection site, and asks why he is so obscure, given the engrossing nature of his stories. It's a good question. I missed out on Witting for many years and it was only because of the advocacy of Nigel Moss, an excellent judge, that I sampled him. I'm glad I did, because all the books of his that I've read have merit.

Narrated by a likeable bookseller, John Rutherford, and set in a thinly disguised Sussex, Murder in Blue introduced Detective Inspector  Charlton, who was to become a series character. There's more focus on characterisation and setting than you find in, say, most of the Freeman Wills Crofts books, and definitely more humour. Witting was witty! The story begins extremely well thanks to Witting's smooth narrative style, although I felt it sagged in the later stages. Overall, however, a decent start to a career of under-valued accomplishment.

Forgotten Book - Obelists Fly High

I first came across the name of C. Daly King in Julian Symons' Bloody Murder. Symons was notoriously dismissive of many Golden Age writers, although he admired Anthony Berkeley and Agatha Christie, and he clearly had a sneaking affection for King's work. I think he recognised that although King's stories were usually quite barmy and riddled with flaws of various kinds, there was something breathtaking and at times admirable about the sheer outrageousness of his use of the tropes of the classic whodunit. My feelings are much the same.

Symons felt, and again I agree, that King's most notable novel was Obelists Fly High. When introducing a 1980 reprint for Collins Crime Club (which had published several of King's books - first editions are rare and much sought-after by collectors; the jacket image comes from Mark Sutcliffe's site), he summed it up as "one of the most extraordinary detective puzzles of the twentieth century". It was the third of the "obelist" books, each of which involved a bizarre killing aboard a particular form of transportation: the first as on board ship, the second on a transcontinental express, and this one on an aeroplane.

There are three diagrams, one of them a plan of the plane. Then comes a "schedule of reported movements" of the passengers, because this is one of those books where timings and whereabouts of suspects are key. And finally there is a "schedule of actual movements", whose contents are naturally rather different. But there is more. The book begins with an epilogue. And it ends with a prologue. King was one of those writers who played games with the structure of the whodunit, and I'm sure Borges would have approved.

There is also a "cluefinder", a device I really love. Basically, it ties in with the idea of "fair play" in detection, and highlights clues in the text that the reader may have missed. It's sometimes been said that King originated the "cluefinder", which isn't the case, although the example in this book is my favourite. J.J. Connington came up with one before King turned to fiction, and his example was followed by others, including Freeman Wills Crofts. If there was an earlier pioneer of this device than Connington, I'd be interested to know, but I'm not aware of one. (Similarly, whilst other writers have begun their books with an epilogue, has anyone else ended with a prologue as well?)

What of the story? Well, it involves a threat to kill a famous surgeon. Michael Lord, King's series cop, is tasked with guarding the surgeon, but suffice to say that he doesn't make a good fist of it. There is plenty to cringe about in the story, quite apart from Lord's bungling, and King's habit of giving his characters jokey names is especially irksome. He doesn't ramble quite as much as in some other books, but his habit of inserting his own idiosyncratic opinions in his stories is also rather challenging to a modern reader. So it is undeniably a flawed novel. But if you are fascinated by the structure and techniques of the Golden Age mystery, as I am, it is a must-read.

Forgotten Book - The Pit-Prop Syndicate

Freeman Wills Crofts has enjoyed quite a revival during the last couple of years. The British Library has reissued several of his best novels, and Harper Collins have reprinted others, both in paperback editions and in some cases as hardbacks under the Detective Story Club imprint. The latter include his third book, The Pit-Prop Syndicate, which first appeared in 1922.

Crofts was still learning his trade at that time. Inspector French was yet to be created, and he'd followed up the success of The Cask with the slightly disappointing The Ponson Case. Here, he experiments rather interestingly. The first half of the book follows an amateur investigation into a suspected criminal conspiracy. The second half sees the professionals take over, in the form of Inspector Willis. It's a tricky blend, but I found it appealing.

Seymour Merriman (great name!) is cycling in France when he chances upon a strange puzzle. Why would a lorry change its number plate? He comes across a pit-prop exporting business (one of those enterprises that presumably died out long ago) and also a pretty girl. Back in England, he tells a friend, and they decide to return to France to investigate (and Seymour also wants to get to know the pretty girl better). The plot thickens from there.

This is a classic Crofts story, meticulously planned and written. And I can't think of many Golden Age stories featuring Goole and Hull, but this is one! In the second half of the book, the investigation dragged a bit, and I found some of the detail a bit dull, much like Seymour's romance. All the same, it's an enjoyable story, and there's also a bonus in the dust jacket artwork, as well as the inclusion of an intro by John Curran and a little-known short story with a railway setting, "Danger in Shroude Valley". 

Forgotten Book - The Affair at Little Wokeham

Rather more than a decade ago, I was sent a catalogue of books by a collector who was seeking to dispose of some of his treasures. A good many rare titles by Freeman Wills Crofts were available, some of them signed; although at that time I had very mixed feelings about Crofts' work, I was tempted and I fell. Taking a deep breath, I splashed out on five books. If I wondered whether I'd regret it, these days my only regret was that I didn't snap up some of the other titles that were on sale. With rare books, one has to be opportunistic, since the chances are that one will never get a second chance.

Today, I appreciate Crofts much more than I did, even though there's no denying his limitations as a writer. What's more, because he wrote a good deal, sometimes his standards slipped. But The Affair at Little Wokeham, first published in 1943, is a pleasing inverted mystery, set in the pre-war era. It's an inverted mystery, but rather different from Crofts' three previous ventures into this sub-genre. Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of one of five main characters - four of them are embroiled in the case, the fifth is Inspector Joseph French. It's a device that works well.

At the time this book was written, Crofts had long been resident in Guildford, and Little Wokeham is a village in the area he was familiar with. We are first introduced to Anthony Mallaby, a likeable if naive doctor who settles there, and falls in love with a young woman called Christina Winnington. She is the niece of one of those unappealing elderly rich folk who so regularly crop up as victims in murder mysteries. And soon we watch Guy Plant plan the murder of old Clarence Winnington.

As so often with Crofts, the story turns upon a cleverly constructed alibi. Guy's cunning plan does, however, entail involving someone else in his plot, a high-risk strategy to say the least. When the crime is committed, French is initially at a loss, but the reader can be sure that he will pursue the murderer to the bitter end, and so he does. I really enjoyed this story, although it didn't appeal to me as much as Antidote to Venom, which I regard as Crofts' finest inverted mystery, given the unusual setting in a zoo, ingenious murder method, and rather likeable protagonist. Guy is a nasty piece of work, and we don't empathise with him as much as is, I think, desirable in a story like this. Instead, our main sympathies are directed towards Mallaby, who finds that one terrible mistake puts his own life in jeopardy. Definitely worth reading.

Forgotten Book - Murders in Sequence

I'd heard a little about the American author Milton Propper before I finally got around to sampling his work. Several commentators have compared his work to that of Freeman Wills Crofts, whom Propper admired (he was also a fan of Lynn Brock, I gather from the Passing Tramp blog). I was rather intrigued by the title of his last novel, Murders in Sequence (and also by its alternative title, The Blood Transfusion Murder), which was first published in 1943. Propper (1906-62) was a writer in the Golden Age tradition; his first novel appeared in 1929..

After a group of young people have been out on the town in Philadelphia, a car crash results in serious injury to Victor Watson. His cousin, Eugene Talbot, volunteers to donate blood to help save his life, but Talbot is murdered before the transfusion can take place. The strange sequence of murders foretold by the book's British title then starts to unfold. And it appears that the crimes are linked to inheritance, and a tricky family tree.

The initial police investigation results in the arrest of the obvious suspect, whose girlfriend seeks help from Propper's regular detective, cop Tommy Rankin. He operates almost like an amateur sleuth, re-examining the work undertaken by colleagues,and discovering that the case is far more complex than it seemed at first sight. Unfortunately, I found the investigation, and even the dramatic final plot twist, rather less engaging than I'd hoped.

This is partly because Propper's style of writing is so undistinguished that he makes Crofts seem like Graham Greene. The characters are lifeless, and even Tommy is a rather dull dog. The plotting, although quite crafty, seemed to me to be less meticulous than Crofts'. All this is a pity, because in other hands, the plot could have been the foundation of a very lively story. After writing this book, Propper abandoned the genre, and it may be that the lacklustre writing reflects the fact that he'd wearied of detective fiction. His later life seems to be have been deeply unhappy, and ultimately he committed suicide. So it would be harsh to judge him on this book alone. His earlier work may well brim with zest, but that can't really be said of Murders in Sequence.

Forgotten Book - The Box Office Murders

The Box Office Murders and The Purple Sickle Murders were the original British and American titles of a novel by Freeman Wills Crofts which has now been reprinted as Inspector French and the Box Office Murders. It was first published in 1929, and although it's a murder mystery, it's not a typical Golden Age whodunit but rather a lively thriller set mainly in London.

Inspector French is consulted by a young woman called Thurza Darke (great name!) who works as a clerk in a box office. She has got herself into a tricky situation with an unscrupulous bunch of people, and seeks his guidance. He is impressed by her manner, and arranges to meet her at the National Gallery, but she doesn't turn up. Unfortunately, her body is soon found, and it appears that someone has drowned her.

French, I thought, was rather remiss in not having the girl watched for her own protection, but clearly the police did things differently in those days. I was surprised when French later indulges in burglary of a suspect's premises, and even more startled when he not only breaks in somewhere else, but enlists the support of a subordinate and the subordinate's young son in so dong. Blimey!

But these quibbles don't matter, and I enjoyed the story. It's quite fast-moving, and Crofts cleverly obscures the reality of the criminal scheme of the gang of murderers responsible for killing several young women who worked as box office clerks. Not an orthodox police procedural, by any means, but a very welcome reprint, not least because it illustrates that Crofts was a more versatile writer than he has often been given credit for. His literary style may have been plain, but I must say that the more of his work I read, the more I appreciate his considerable skills as a plotsmith.

Forgotten Book - Inspector French's Greatest Case

Freeman Wills Crofts published Inspector French's Greatest Case in 1924. It was his fifth book in five years. Already he'd enjoyed considerable success, especially with his best-selling debut, The Cask, and he hadn't troubled to create a series character. The title of this novel suggests that he didn't contemplate that Inspector French would be anything other than a one-trick pony. But things often don't work out as authors expect. In fact, French became a popular detective and Crofts continued to write about him to the end of his life, more than 30 years later.

The opening of the story is relatively conventional - it even reminded me, very distantly, of Gaboriau's The Blackmailers. A firm of diamond merchants is robbed, and a man named Gething is killed by whoever was responsible. Inspector Joseph French of the Yard is called in, but at first his determined inquiries get nowhere.

French, however, is made of stern stuff. He's known as "Soapy Joe" at the Yard, in reference to his habit of charming witnesses and suspect into telling him what he needs to know. We get a few insights into his domestic life - in moments of difficulty, he confides in his wife  Emily, who comes up with suggestions about how to tackle some of the puzzles he confronts. We also learn, in a gruff moment, that he lost his eldest son in the war. This is a book, like many others of the Golden Age, in which the shadow of the conflict looms, even though years had passed since the Armistice.

The plot is convoluted, and the planning of the crime turns out to have been as meticulous as French's investigation of it. French manages to pack in quite a lot of overseas travel, and Crofts' handling of the travelogue-type scenes suggest he was a seasoned and enthusiastic traveller. I very much enjoyed this book, and I'm glad that its recent reissue in paperback makes it widely available once again.

The Long Arm of the Law

We tend to associate classic crime fiction with amateur sleuths, Wimsey, Sheringham, Marple, and company. In reality, though, police stories abounded during the first half of the twentieth century. The "police procedural" may be thought of as a concept of the Fifities onwards, but Freeman Wills Crofts and others were writing books about meticulous police investigations long before the days of Lawrence Treat, Ed McBain, and Maurice Proctor.

Classic police stories are celebrated in my latest anthology in the British Library's Crime Classics series. The Long Arm of the Law charts the development of the police story over more than half a century. The first entry is a very obscure one, "The Mystery of Chernholt" by Alice and Claude Askew. And we come right up to the (relatively) modern era with Sergeant Cluff featuring in "The Moorlanders" by Gil North.

I really enjoyed putting this book together. It is, believe it or not, the third of my anthologies that the British Library have published this year alone - and there's one more still to come! - and I like to think that this reflects an increasing interest in short crime fiction. Books of this kind, though I say it myself are a great way of discovering new writers and new detective characters. Anthologies are always a mixed bag, and I do aim for quite a high degree of variety, but there's sure to be something for every crime fan - or so I hope.

This book contains, it's fair to say, a higher number of obscure stories than my other anothologies in the series, although several of the authors are well-known names - Crofts, Henry Wade, Christianna Brand, John Creasey, and Nicholas Blake among them. My researches benefited enormously from help given by a number of experts, including John Cooper, Jamie Sturgeon, and Nigel Moss. I leave it to readers to judge the result, but I'm optimistic that this book will provide crime fans with a great deal of entertainment, and some truly fascinating new discoveries.

Forgotten Book - The Lyttleton Case

The Lyttleton Case by R.A.V. Morris is a fairly early example of the Golden Age detective novel. It was first published by Collins in 1922, and was well received, but the author never returned to the genre. I find this puzzling, and so evidently did Douglas A. Anderson, who contributes a useful foreword to the new edition, which appears in Harper Collins' splendid Detective Story Club series of reprints.

I have to say I'd never heard of Morris, or his book until this new edition came out. Douglas Anderson suggests that Morris was tempted to write because he wanted to keep up with the achievements of his brother Kenneth, who wrote fantasy novels. Both men were members of the Theosophical Society, but there's no explanation as to why Morris didn't build on the success of his crime fiction debut.

Anderson points out that there are various references to detective fiction in the story - Dupin and Sherlock are name-checked, but perhaps the most significant mention is that of Freeman Wills Crofts' The Cask (1920). My impression is that the success of the Crofts book inspired Morris, because there are some similarities between his approach to crime writing and Crofts'. (Crofts also influenced better known writers such as G.D.H. Cole, Henry Wade, and John Bude).

The first part of the story is clever and appealing. A rich man called Lyttleton disappears, and we soon fear the worst for him. An ingenious crime has been committed, and the story is enhanced by several nice touches of wit. I felt, however, that it sagged quite noticeably from about the half-way point, and after the major revelation, the explanation of what has been going on is prolonged. These flaws are the marks of an inexperienced writer. But Morris certainly had talent, and it's a shame he didn't go on to greater things in the genre.

Forgotten Book - Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy

Freeman Wills Crofts published Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy (aka The Starvel Hollow Tragedy) in 1927. It's often cited as one of his best books, and I concur with that view. The story is readable from start to finish, and the plot is worked out rather cleverly. So although I latched on to one aspect of the solution at an early stage, Crofts managed to confuse me with some rather neat twists.

At first, the focus is on an attractive young woman who lives with her miserly uncle in a Yorkshire mansion - the location seemed from internal evidence to be somewhere in the vicinity of Helmsby and Thirsk. After she goes away on a short visit to a friend, she returns to find the house burned to the ground. Three corpses are discovered, evidently those of her uncle and two servants. At first it looks like a tragic accident.

But a local bank manager takes a different view, and before long Scotland Yard are called in, in the person of good old Inspector Joseph French. He's portrayed in a rather human fashion, yearning for promotion and keen to keep on the right side of his superiors, but utterly relentless in his pursuit of the guilty once it becomes clear that this is a case of arson and multiple murder.

As with The Cask, Crofts manages to sustain interest in the detailed police investigation by offering a sequence of surprising developments. I enjoyed this book - which was reissued by Hogarth back in the 80s - and can recommend it to anyone who likes Croftsian writing. Crofts was an engineer by profession and this mystery is certainly engineered with high calibre craftsmanship.

Forgotten Book - The Davidson Case

Today's Forgotten Book dates from 1929, and is an early case featuring Dr Priestley, John Rhode's cerebral and rather curmudgeonly Great Detective. The Davidson Case is an enjoyable mystery. I figured out the culprit's secret at a fairly early stage, but that didn't spoil the book for me, which strikes me as one of the best Rhodes I've read to date. (He also wrote as Cecil Waye and as Miles Burton, and two Burtons have been chosen for inclusion in the British Library's series of Crime Classics.)

The book has a background in business, something that was - perhaps surprisingly - quite common in Golden Age stories, especially those written by people like Rhode and Freeman Wills Crofts, who had extensive business experience. Guy Davidson's unpleasant cousin, Sir Hector, has taken charge of the family firm, and his behaviour - which includes getting rid of a senior employee called Lowry - is causing Guy concern. Sir Hector seems unstoppable, but when he is found dead after a train journey, Guy is able to take control of the company, and order seems to have been restored.

Until, that is, the police start to suspect Guy of having murdered Sir Hector. Priestley assists the police, but finds some aspects of the case troubling, and refuses to testify in court. Rhode offers a pleasing sequence of plot twists, and "justice" is mentioned in the very last sentence, a reminder of the extent to which notions of justify preoccupied Golden Age writers. I found the story held my attention from start to finish.

One line I enjoyed particularly came when Priestley and his secretary Harold pursue their investigations into Guy's activities. "Really, my boy," the great sleuth says, "the public house is the finest possible place in which to obtain information" There speaks Rhode, a pub-lover who enjoyed a pint or three (one can't quite imagine Poirot saying something similar to Hastings, can one?) A good book, well worth a read.

Forgotten Book - Bury Him Darkly

Bury Him Darkly by Henry Wade (1936) is, at first glance, a Golden Age novel of a familiar type. A series of robberies take place at jewellers' shops; in the course of one of them, a man dies; a suspect has an alibi; and the police go to great lengths to break it down. It sounds like the sort of book that Freeman Wills Crofts specialised in, and there's no doubt that Crofts was an early influence on Wade. But there is more to Wade's book than meets the eye.

Crofts' books about Inspector French record meticulous police investigations into carefully engineered crimes. This book goes further. We are presented with a picture of a team of police officers, from Assistant Commissioner (Crime) to constables, working together in the common cause. Best of all, we follow the enquiries of Wade's finest character, Inspector John Poole, and learn that, for all his brilliance, he is also very human and fallible.

The details of the crime are cleverly put together, and although one can make a stab at figuring out whodunit quite early in the story, Wade keeps a number of pleasing surprises up his sleeve. On a personal note, I was fascinated when (as in at least one other Golden Age novel) a body is found on a rubbish dump. When I was writing my first book, All the Lonely People, and came up with the same idea as a plot twist, I believed I was being highly topical,as well as making a sort of social comment about the Britain of that time. Ah, the naivete of youth! It's harder to be truly original than I realised.

Wade is very good at depicting the way in which police officers interact, and does not not neglect the petty jealousies, the mistakes, and the temptations to bend the rules. It's all rather sophisticated. Wade's presentation of female characters at this point was not quite as compelling (he remedied this in Lonely Magdalen) but he really could write. Even if you find alibi-breaking dull - and it's not my favourite form of fictional detection - this book is well worth a read. And the unusual ending is also very good and very life-like.

Forgotten Book - The Ponson Case

The Detective Story Library imprint of Harper Collins has revived several fascinating titles, including some of my favourites. The Rasp by Philip MacDonald, which has an excellent intro by Tony Medawar, is an example. But Freeman Wills Crofts' second book, The Ponson Case, is a mystery I'd never read until I read the DSL reprint. This nicely presented reissue benefits from an intro by crime novelist Dolores Gordon Smith, who talked about Crofts at last year's hugely successful Bodies in the Library conference.

Dolores tells a story about Crofts' meticulous approach to the plotting of this novel, which was a follow-up to his best-selling debut The Cask. He spent three hours persuading his publishers that he had researched the plot detail with intense attention to detail. And this shows in the book, although I have to say the result is not totally gripping. There's a nice description of an English country house at the start of the book, but once the body of Sir William Ponson is discovered in the river, the focus is on alibis, and how to crack them.

Crofts ditched Inspector Burnley, who took the lead in The Cask, and introduced the equally painstaking Inspector Tanner. A sketch map of the scene of the crime is supplied, and Tanner ventures as far as Portugal in search of the truth about Ponson's death. But there is a shortage of suspects, a failing of several Golden Age novels. Why is it a failing? Because the characters are not explored in enough depth to compensate for the limited nature of the mystery.

Eventually Tanner gets to the truth, but it turns out to be rather anti-climactic, to say the least. But I'm really glad I read it, and not only because it filled a gap in my knowledge of Crofts' writing. What we have here is a book which shows a capable crime writer at the start of his career, trying to do something unusual  in genre terms to build on the conspicuous success of his debut novel. It was this determination not to get stuck in a rut (despite his long-term fondness for alibi puzzles) that set Crofts apart from lesser writers. If you look at his inverted novels, such as Antidote to Venom, you see how keen he was to experiment, and that same freshness of approach is the most notable feature of The Ponson Case..A welcome reprint, then, which has given me a better understanding of Crofts' approach to his craft.

Forgotten Boo - Mystery in the Channel

Mystery in the Channel, by Freeman Wills Crofts, was first published in 1931, the same year as last week's Forgotten Book, The Secret of High Eldersham. The two novels are very different, and this illustrates the point that the range of Golden Age fiction - even in the case of authors such as Crofts and John Rhode/Miles Burton, who are often lumped together and labelled "humdrums" - is actually quite extensive.

A steamer sailing from Newhaven to Dieppe comes across a yacht which has an apparently dead man on deck. The crew board the yacht and find another corpse down below. What on earth has happened?Wisely, a decision is taken to call in Scotland Yard, and the case is passed to Inspector French, that most dogged of detectives.

It soon emerges that the dead men were prime movers in a dodgy financial business. Were they fleeing their creditors, and if so, who made their escape from justice more permanent than they'd intended? In 1931, this was a highly topical story-line, and Crofts makes it very clear, all the way through the book, that he is contemptuous of those who exploit the financially vulnerable. His sympathy is for the victims of the swindlers, ordinary people who face ruin.

I enjoyed this story. It is well-constructed, as usual with Crofts, and suspicion shifts from one candidate to another in a very satisfying way. There's a good, dramatic climax, too. All in all, a good example of Crofts' skill at plotting, and a story that is sufficiently "different" to be well worth remembering.

Antidote to Venom - another Crime Classic

It's less than two years since I wrote on this blog about Freeman Wills Crofts' novel Antidote to Venom, and expressed the view that it was a book definitely worth seeking out. Well, anyone who likes the sound of the book will now find it much more easily, as it has just been republished as part of the British Library's Crime Classics series.

I mentioned on Monday that the publication of my British Library anthology Capital Crimes has been brought forward because of the scale of advance sales, and the same is true of Antidote to Venom. I've supplied this edition with an intro which outlines why I like the book, but it's perhaps worth adding a few words here.

One of the things I admire most in a writer is a willingness to abandon one's literary comfort zone, and try something different, and ambitious. I've often given the example of Anthony Berkeley, who in his Francis Iles novels in particular was trying to write a crime story of a new sort. A book like Before the Fact is deeply flawed, but for me, it's still worth ten pedestrian detective stories, because it was such a daring story idea.

The same is true here - and not only because of the very intriguing zoo setting. Crofts was being very ambitious with this book, and I don't regard it is a total success. But I found it a gripping read, and I am impressed that such a successful author was prepared to try to write about complex issues of good and evil in the context of an elaborate murder mystery. This is the reason why I was so keen for the British Library to republish the book.

I should say that in my role as Series Consultant, I come up with many book and author suggestions that aren't viable for one reason or another, and the Library also keeps digging into the vaults and finding books I wasn't aware of. But although Crofts was, in his day, a bigger name than Charles Kingston, say, or Mavis Doriel Hay, I'm glad that this book (and soon, The Hog's Back Mystery) are enjoying a new life. He was an interesting writer who deserves to be remembered.

Forgotten Book - Arrogant Alibi

Is there any Golden Age novelist whose work is as fascinating and yet as frustrating as C. Daly King's? If so, I've yet to find him or her. My Forgotten Book for today is Arrogant Alibi, first published in 1939, and it's a case in point. Nowadays it's incredibly scarce. It took me years to track it down, and when eventually I got hold of a poor copy, I fell on it with delight.

And there are some superb elements in the story. A terrible flood in the vicinity of the crime scene lends atmosphere, while Eygptology and a mysterious mummy and other ancient artefacts play a part in the story. There's lot of complex plot material concerning alibis and the apparent impossibility of certain events. There's a neat double twist ending. Michael Lord, the cop who stars in King's books, and his pal Dr L. Rees Pons are on the scene as well. What's not to like?

The famous critics and Golden Age fans Barzun and Taylor really liked this book Since they could be very harsh judges, that's quite something. But I'm afraid I didn't get on with Arrogant Alibi. It's one thing to have all the right ingredients for a whodunit, quite another to make best use of them. And I'm afraid I felt that this is the sort of book that justifies people who don't like Golden Age novels in saying that they are boring. King spends pages, for instance, on explaining a telephone system that is connected to the storyline. I'm afraid this went so far beyond pleasingly authentic detail as to cause me to lose the will to live. And the characters didn't come to life at all as far as I was concerned. I wasn't expecting Sophie Hannah or Nicci French, but this wasn't even Freeman Wills Crofts.

Because my hopes had been high, I ended the book feeling disappointed, but not surprised that Arrogant Alibi hasn't been reprinted, as far as I know, in the intervening years. Yet this experience simply reinforces my curiosity about King, and the way he could veer from excellence, for instance in Obelists Fly High and The Curious Mr Tarrant, to tedium (and Obelists En Route shows both his best and his worst sides.) Dorothy L. Sayers admired some of his work, and so do I. And if you are lucky enough to find a first edition of this book in a fine dust jacket, it will no doubt be a good investment, even if not the best whodunit you'll ever read!

Forgotten Book - Found Floating

It's a standing joke with crime writers that a visit to an exotic location should be followed by a book in the same setting, so that the trip can legitimately be treated as tax-deductible. It's also fair to say that writers who travel far and wide often feel inspired to transform their wanderings into fiction. A Mediterranean cruise features in my Forgotten Book for today, and I'm sure that the author, Freeman Wills Crofts, must have been on just such a cruise not long before he wrote the story.

One snag was that his trip, which included a stop in Cadiz, took place before the Spanish Civil War, and by the time Found Floating came out, he needed to explain in a prefatory note that the cruise undertaken by William Carrington and his family also pre-dated the conflict. But you can bet that Crofts enjoyed his cruise. He devotes a whole chapter to an account of the cruise ship! Even allowing for the fact that he did introduce some plot material as well, this "Interlude" as he describes it was a bit much, I felt. On the whole, the story is more about travel than the fairly ingenious murder plan at its heart.

William Carrington is a wealthy businessman, but there is a rift in the family about who should take over. His appointed successor, Mant Carrington, has recently come back to Britain from Australia, and he is not universally popular. He is the main target of an attempted poisoning, and the cruise is intended to aid the recovery of those who were affected, but Mant is not destined to return alive. Inspector French is given the chance to join the ship, and very pleased he is about it too.

The killer's scheme is quite complicated, but I must admit that French's unravelling of it did not keep me gripped. Part of the problem was the very small pool of potential suspects, and the fact that I didn't really care about them. Nor did I think that the killer's motivation was adequately signposted. Crofts wasn't very interested in criminal psychology, and this makes Found Floating a flawed book. He did much better in some of his other novels, but at least I'm sure he had a great time in the Med,!

Forgotten Book - Antidote to Venom

I've gradually become more interested in the work of Golden Age stalwart Freeman Wills Crofts. Despite his sometimes laborious style, he was a thoughtful man who experimented with the detective story form rather more than I had realised. My Forgotten Book for today, Antidote to Venom, is a case in point. First published in 1938, it includes a short preface in which Crofts makes it clear that he was trying was a twofold experiment.

First, he combines an "inverted" crime story with a conventional account of police detection. This is a bold step, structurally, but very interesting. George Surridge is the protagonist of the first part of the book. He is in charge of a zoo at "Birmington" in the Midlands, good at his job, but unhappily married to a snooty woman and fonder of gambling than his finances should permit.

Things start to go wrong when he falls for a woman called Nancy. He contemplates murdering an aunt for her money, but shrinks from the act. However, when the old lady dies, and he finds that her solicitor has been robbing her of all her assets, he gets sucked into a complicated and ingenious criminal conspiracy. I thought this part of the story was extremely well done. After murder is committed, it seems that the crime will go unpunished, but once Inspector French comes on the scene, the criminals' fate is, of course, sealed.

The second part of the experiment is that Crofts was trying to tell what he called a "positive" story. What he meant by this was that he was conveying a positive religious message about the redemption of a sinner. This aspect of the experiment is less successful, mainly because Crofts was not especially good at creating truly believable characters acting in a consistent and wholly believable way. Even so, I thought that what he did in the book was brave, unusual, and absolutely readable. I've read a number of his books now, but I'd rate this as the most impressive so far. Definitely worth seeking out.

Forgotten Book - The Cask

Is The Cask, by Freeman Wills Crofts, really a Forgotten Book? Published in 1920, it was in its day a best-seller, far outstripping in sales most other Golden Age titles, and it remains the best known of Crofts' books, even though he was a prolific author who went on to write for more than 30 years. But yes, I think it is pretty much forgotten today, by all except really keen Golden Age fans. I count myself as one of their number, but even I have only just got around to reading it.

I've had my green Penguin copy of the book for years, but I confess that I'd been rather put off by its sheer length. It's a lot longer than most Golden Age novels, which normally (whatever their other defects) had the merit of being pretty short. I thought it might be a rather dreary read. But it proved not to be, and I must say I was glad I did make the effort to read through it, albeit belatedly.

The opening premise is gripping. Dock workers unloading some casks that have arrived in London from continental Europe drop one, causing it to split slightly. They discover that it contains gold sovereigns...and that's not all. They can see a woman's hand. The police are called, but a mysterious Frenchman arrives and claims the cask as his own. Soon Inspector Burnley is hot on the trail. The cask and the Frenchman, Felix Leon, are tracked down, and it is found that inside the cask is the body of a beautiful woman. It's a vivid and memorable image, though described in Crofts' sober style. Who is she, and what caused her death?

One of the suspects has an apparently unbreakable alibi, and much of the story is devoted to attempts to crack it. This was to become a trade mark device for Crofts. I was impressed by the way he maintained my interest in the story from start to finish.Yes, by modern standards, it is slow, but the elaborations of the puzzle are very well done. Much of the book is set in France, and the fact that many Golden Age novels had a rather cosmopolitan feel is rather under-estimated by their detractors. All in all, this is a book that is still definitely worth reading today.