I'll admit to a certain amount of prejudice in support of fictional police officers who are extremely intelligent, have no drinking problems (or other disqualifying personal difficulties), have generally happy or at least acceptable family lives, occasionally make mistakes, and manage to solve complex and interesting fictional mysteries. No "noir" here, though certainly some "gris" might be both necessary and acceptable (see also "Inspector Maigret"). To find such detectives, as a general rule, the traditional mystery reader will often turn to that Golden Age which we celebrate here. Among the heroes produced by the authors in the Golden Age is the Scotland Yard detective, Inspector French, created by Freeman Wills Crofts. To learn more about Crofts and his many books, may I recommend Curtis Evans's excellent non-fiction book, Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920–1961, an excellent source of information about some of the authors who were significant influences on other writers of the period. As for Inspector French, here's what I wrote for my podcast review of Inspector French's Greatest Case, written by Crofts in 1924, and the first (and one of the best) of the Inspector French books:
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On a cold November night, a murder victim is discovered in front of an open safe at the offices of a firm of diamond merchants. The diamonds and cash that had been kept in the safe have vanished. So begins what, for Inspector French of Scotland Yard, will become his greatest case. The story is told in Inspector French’s Greatest Case, by Freeman Wills Crofts.
When we talk about classic mystery authors, we frequently mention so many authors from the so-called Golden Age of detective fiction – writers such as Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, and John Dickson. Carr. Curiously enough, we hear less about another of the great authors of the period, Freeman Wills Crofts. And yet, Crofts was a tremendously influential and popular author, and his primary detective character, Inspector French, was the forerunner of a great many other official investigators whose books became known as police procedurals.
Inspector French’s Greatest Case was the first book by Crofts to feature Inspector French, appearing in 1924, and the pattern of the story could be taken as a blueprint for later, similar novels. A crime is committed. Inspector French takes over the investigation. By careful and diligent pursuit of the clues – clues, I might add, generally fairly shared with the reader – Inspector French eventually finds the correct solution to the case.
For his attention to detail, Crofts has been referred to as the founder of the so-called “humdrum” school of detective fiction – presumably meant in a less-than-complimentary fashion. But that kind of routine detective work is at the heart of police procedurals, right down to the kind of forensic science we see on the various CSI series. And Crofts makes the routine work interesting for us. We follow Inspector French, understand his thinking, puzzle with him over the clues he uncovers, follow the endless red herrings, and join him as he interviews witnesses and suspects, building up the information he – and we – need to solve the crime.
It’s worth noting that Inspector French was something of a departure from most of the fictional detectives at the time, in that he was a competent, professional police investigator. Most detectives were of the “brilliant amateur” type, and the police in their stories were primarily foils for the detective work of the amateur. In Inspector French, we meet a diligent, hard-working police detective – one, to be sure, supported by a good secondary staff of officers and investigators, not to mention approving superiors – but a man who is used to working long hours and using his ingenuity and intelligence to put together the pieces of a criminal puzzle.
Certainly that’s what we are given in Inspector French’s Greatest Case. French is called in to solve what appears to be a straightforward murder and robbery at a firm of diamond merchants, where the head office clerk is found lying in front of an open – and, alas, empty – safe. It is the kind of case that might be expected to be fairly straightforward and easy to solve. But we soon discover that there are all kinds of complications – and that we are faced with a criminal who has ingeniously prepared a number of false trails, the better to conceal the truth.
And so we follow French as he visits a number of European cities, on the trail of elusive suspects. We puzzle over the clues with him and share his pleasure when he is able to interpret them correctly – and his frustrations when a particular line of the investigation fizzles out, leaving him to go back and pick up the threads and move in another direction.
Crofts earned a reputation for relying on elaborate alibis – the kind, as has been noted by others that rely on the notion that trains, for example, run exactly to the times printed on their timetables. While there is some of that in this book, most of Inspector French’s time is spent trying to trace a particularly elusive suspect, rather than looking for ways to break an alibi.
I think Inspector French’s Greatest Case is one of the best of Freeman Wills Crofts’ books. I think it is a good way to make the acquaintance of both Crofts and Inspector French.
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This review has been edited slightly. You can listen to the original review by clicking here.
Next week: She Shall Have Murder, by Delano Ames.
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