'Do You Write Under Your Own Name?'

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 fou...

Murder in Blue , published in 1937 by Hodder & Stoughton, was the first detective novel of Clifford Witting. It was an auspicious de...

I first came across the name of C. Daly King in Julian Symons' Bloody Murder . Symons was notoriously dismissive of many Golden Age ...

Freeman Wills Crofts has enjoyed quite a revival during the last couple of years. The British Library has reissued several of his best novel...

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 ma...

I'd heard a little about the American author Milton Propper before I finally got around to sampling his work. Several commentators have ...

The Box Office Murders and The Purple Sickle Murders were the original British and American titles of a novel by Freeman Wills Crofts whic...

Freeman Wills Crofts published Inspector French's Greatest Case in 1924. It was his fifth book in five years. Already he'd enjo...

We tend to associate classic crime fiction with amateur sleuths, Wimsey, Sheringham, Marple, and company. In reality, though, police stor...

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 1...

Freeman Wills Crofts published Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy (aka The Starvel Hollow Tragedy ) in 1927. It's often cited as ...

Today's Forgotten Book dates from 1929, and is an early case featuring Dr Priestley, John Rhode's cerebral and rather curmudgeonl...

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 jewel...

The Detective Story Library imprint of Harper Collins has revived several fascinating titles, including some of my favourites. The Rasp by ...

Mystery in the Channel , by Freeman Wills Crofts, was first published in 1931, the same year as last week's Forgotten Book, The Secret o...

It's less than two years since I wrote on this blog about Freeman Wills Crofts' novel Antidote to Venom , and expressed the view...

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 ...

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...

I've gradually become more interested in the work of Golden Age stalwart Freeman Wills Crofts. Despite his sometimes laborious style, he...

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 sale...