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 - 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 - The 12.30 From Croydon

Long before Agatha Christie's 4.50 from Paddington, we had Freeman Wills Crofts' 12.30 from Croydon - the former title referred to a train journey, the latter to a flight in the first chapter, which ends with the discovery that an elderly passenger has died. Crofts' book is my choice today as a Forgotten Book, and it's an interesting example of the "inverted" crime story, in the style of R. Austin Freeman, who actually gets a mention in the text.

The bulk of the narrative recounts Charles Swinburn's path towards murdering his uncle. His motive is money. The book was published in 1934, and the world slump is affecting Charles' business. He also needs money to attract the woman he loves, Una Mellor. The business pressures are described more convincingly than the romance - Una is so horribly mercenary that it's difficult to see her appeal.

Charles shows a good deal of ingenuity in carryiing out his crime, but sadly for him, Inspector French is called in to investigate. A blackmailer's demands prompt Charles to contemplate a second crime, and I thought the story was going to end with a twist in the manner of a Francis Iles book. But I was mistaken. In fact, after a lengthy trial, the ending is swift and something of an anti-climax.

Crofts does, however, offer us a couple of closing chapters in which French explains how he conducted his investigation, and he tidies up the loose ends in his usual efficient way. This is an enjoyable story, even if Charles' rapid shifts from complacency to panic become tediously repetitive. Here Crofts was stepping out of his comfort zone, and he did so to good effect. Not surprisingly, he soon returned to the "inverted" form of story. Croydon Airport, by the way, finally closed in 1959.

Forgotten Book - The Hog's Back Mystery

Freeman Wills Crofts was one of the leading writers of the Golden Age of detective fiction between the wars, but I have only read a few of his books over the years, and by and large have found them competently constructed, but lacking in flair. However, most recently I read The Hog's Back Mystery, my choice for today's Forgotten Book, and found it distinctly more impressive than the other novels by Crofts that I've tried in the past.

The starting point is an apparent domestic intrigue. A doctor's wife has become involved with another man, to the dismay of her friends. Then a chance encounter suggests that the doctor is also playing away from home. He is seen in the company of a younger woman, and lies about what he was getting up to. When the doctor and his friend – who proves to be a nurse of his acquaintance – vanish mysteriously, it seems that they may have run off together. But the truth is very different.

Inspector French is called in, only for one of the doctor's house guests to go missing as well. What is the explanation for the disappearances? And if the three missing people have been murdered, what can be the motive? This is an intriguing and elaborate puzzle, which I found genuinely appealing.

Typically, the weakness of a Crofts mystery is that the suspect with an unbreakable alibi proved to be the culprit, making the storyline rather predictable. But here there are no fewer than six suspects, and a plethora of alibis to unravel. This time, Crofts had me fooled. I'm surprised that this story is not better known, and I also enjoyed the "clue finder" he thoughtfully provided to show how fairly the clues were given. A very good example of that classic mystery puzzle.

The Unbreakable Alibi

I’ve watched another in the 1982 TV series of Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime, starring Francesca Annis and James Warwick as Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. This story was The Unbreakable Alibi, and really it is a skit on the work of Freeman Wills Crofts, the alibi king, whose patient cop Inspector French tirelessly unravelled the most complex alibis. You tend to wonder why criminals in the French era bothered with such elaborate plans when the great man had his train timetable ready to consult at every opportunity.

The story was light but agreeable, with a bit more substance in terms of plot than some of the others I’ve seen in this series. As ever, Annis’ vivacious performance keeps it all going pretty well.

It did make me wonder about the emphasis that crime writers place on alibis. The high water mark was surely in the Golden Age, when Crofts was at his peak, in the 20s and 30s. Writers did rather depend on the trains running to time. After J.J. Connington wrote The Two Tickets Puzzle, Dorothy L. Sayers doffed her cap to him and his book when elaborating upon his idea a year or so later in Five Red Herrings.

Today, alibis still play a part in a good many books - although the same tends not to be true of train timetables! Alibis crop up occasionally in my own work, but I haven’t tended to devote a lot of space to them, preferring to concentrate on other ‘techniques of misdirection’ when putting together a whodunit-style plot. But one of these days, perhaps, I’ll try to create an ‘unbreakable’ alibi for one of my own culprits....

Forgotten Book - Sir John Magill's Last Journey

In the late 1960s, the Collins Crime Club produced a ‘collected edition’ of books by Freeman Wills Crofts, a leading writer of the Golden Age. When I’d read all the Christies and Sayers I could find, I borrowed from our local library a Crofts book called Sir John Magill’s Last Journey. A good title, but I’m afraid I didn’t get very far with the book. For a boy aged about 13 it was simply too dull. But it’s a book admired by some fans, so I decided to give it another try and bought a copy from the same edition– and this time I battled on to the end!

It’s a good example of Crofts’ work, showing both his strengths and his weaknesses. Sir John, a wealthy businessman, disappears and his body is soon found in Northern Ireland. Who killed him? There are several possible suspects, and Inspector Joseph French, pleasant and determined, slowly and methodically seeks out the truth. After a prolonged reconstruction of the crime, there is a dramatic climax at dead of night.

Crofts is good on painstaking plotting – Raymond Chandler, no less, admired his work. He is usually much less careless with details than many of his contemporaries, although the trouble with French is that he specialised in breaking down alibis (‘Of alibis French was usually sceptical’, Crofts says in his ponderous way.) So anyone with a great alibi is our prime suspect. Crofts also uses many interesting geographical settings, and some of these, in Northern Ireland, Cumberland and Scotland, are quite well described in this book. I was interested by this sentence about Northern Ireland, written in 1930: ‘The “troubles” were definitely over and had been for years.’ Sadly, not very prescient.

The weakness is the clunky prose and thin characterisation. This is from what we are told of Magill: ‘Intercourse with his associates was therefore restrained in cordiality.’ No wonder the young Martin Edwards rather lost the will to live when reading that sort of stuff. And worse: ‘Of all the jobs that fell to French, the investigation of the life, habits and human relationships of a given individual was that which he found most tedious.’ This is a cop who is happier with train timetables than psychology. The result is a book that, despite various merits and historical interest, is a bit soporific for much of the journey

Forgotten Book - Gory Knight

Gory Knight, my latest contribution to Patti Abbott’s series of forgotten books, was published in 1937, not long after the appearance of Dorothy L. Sayers’ renowned Gaudy Night. It’s a parody, written by the partnership of Margaret Rivers Larminie and Jane Langslow.

The story parodies the celebrated detectives Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey (and his manservant Bunter), Reggie Fortune, Dr Thorndyke and Inspector French – although the French character appears only in the final stages of the book .The sleuths gather, by improbable means, in an English country house, and are immediately greeted by the disappearance of the cook (the eponymous Ms Knight.)

It’s a fun book. The plot is slight, and perhaps stretched out too much, but there is much pleasure to be had in the rendering of the eccentricities of Poirot, Wimsey and Bunter in particular. I was glad to stumble across it – initially in the pages of Jamie Sturgeon’s catalogue. Jamie sold the book before I called him, but he referred me to another crime fan, the locked room expert Bob Adey, who was able to supply me with a copy.

There is an intriguing family connection between Larminie and a leading contemporary writer, Margaret Yorke. I hope to write an article about this aspect of the story at a future date. But I know nothing about Langslow. If anyone can tell me anything about her, or about how the book came to be written, I’d be very interested to hear it.