It didn't seem to make sense. Young women who had jobs as box-office clerks at movies or theater productions appeared to be committing suicide - very sad, to be sure, but hardly a police matter. Then, one young woman turned up at Inspector French's office at Scotland Yard because she was terrified for her life. She had somehow allowed some rather unsavory people – a small gang of them, apparently – to get control over her by involving her in some petty crime. Now here she was in French's office, asking the police for help. French believed her and tried to offer her some reassurance, some protection. But good intentions don’t always work out as hoped. And that was when those suicides began to look more and more like murders. The full story is told in The Box Office Murders, a 1929 mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts featuring Inspector French. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you're invited to listen to that complete review by clicking here.
Inspector French kept running up against the same problem: why on earth should some criminal gang be trying to lure theatre box office cashiers into some kind of illegal but apparently profitable scheme, even though nobody could figure out what that scheme was…but a scheme which was leaving a deadly trail of victims behind it. As French searches desperately for clues that may help him discover the nature of the deadly plot in which these young women are trapped, he finds himself coming up against dead end after dead end.
And that’s what worries French – the feeling that unless he can crack this case quickly, there are going to be more deaths – and he doesn’t see any real way of stopping them.
Freeman Wills Crofts was one of the leading mystery authors of the Golden Age of Detection. He's usually known for stories which involve detailed timetables or other mainstays of classic police routine. The Box Office Murders is different: we know, almost from the start, who is involved, and who the villains are. But, like French, we don't know the nature of their threat - although, for those who cross the plans of the group, the penalty is death. There's plenty of action, along with a lot of careful police procedure by French - and that's what ultimately makes the difference. It's an excellent book.
Comments