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Födelsedag: 1879-06-01
Avled: 1957-04-11
Kön: male
Nationalitet: UK
Födelseort: Dublin, Ireland
Dödsort: Worthing, Sussex, England
Bostadsorter: Blackheath, Guildford, Surrey, UK
Utbildning: Methodist College, Belfast
Campbell College, Belfast
Yrken: railway engineer
writer
Organisationer: The Detection Club
Priser och utmärkelser: Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (1939)
Kort biografi: Freeman Wills Crofts, the ‘King of Detective Story Writers’, was one of the pre-eminent writers in the golden age of British crime fiction. Acclaimed by his contemporaries, Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, he wrote more than 30 detective novels and was a founder member of the hugely influential DETECTIVE CLUB. Crofts’s most famous creation was Scotland Yard detective, Inspector French (‘As near the real thing as any sleuth in fiction’ THE SUNDAY TIMES).
Born in Dublin, Crofts became an engineer and wrote his debut novel, THE CASK: A DETECTIVE STORY (‘An imaginatively ingenious mystery’ THE EVENING STANDARD) in 1919 during a long absence from work due to illness. He became a full-time writer in 1929 and moved to England with his wife Mary to live in Guildford. He died in 1957.

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Collection as part of a Publishers Series? i Librarything Series (oktober 2021)

Recensioner

Antidote to Venom av Freeman Wills Crofts

Pretty good book. Nothing super exciting but it messes with the traditional format in a neat way while still having a satisfying and interesting actual mystery.

It's set up sort of like a "reverse whodunnit" but even stronger - it takes a long time for you to find out who's going to get murdered with multiple false hints as to who the victim will be and things only really get going like... halfwayish through? It works well, things get set up nicely and the build-up is well done. His character writing is hardly Nobel Literature level but the characters make sense and you get a good idea of their distinct personality and motives - they're more than flat stereotypes. The mystery itself is built around a single conceit but it's pretty ingenious and I liked it

MASSIVE ending spoiler

The very ending is hilarious in a very grim way. The main character is redeemed by confessing to being an accessory to murder, and so he's going to be hanged. But it's ok cause he's come right with God! Incredible. I love it… (mer)

Flaggad

tombomp | 2 andra recensioner | Oct 31, 2023 |

The Hog's Back Mystery (Inspector French #10)

Rating is purely on its merits as a mystery story - the character writing isn't deep or anything, there's no fascinating insight into human nature, it's not humorous etc. BUT as a mystery it's really solid - lots of clever misdirection, a long walk to the point when you get to see the big picture of what's going on but nothing at all held back (if you're clever you could work out things quite a bit before the denouement I think), well paced so the interest is constantly kept up, a wide pool of believable suspects. In the denouement he's very specific about what exactly happened and also gives the page numbers of the clues used to build the case. Admittedly you could pick holes in it a bit but it satisfied me. I'd have liked a little bit more of an epilogue but ah well. The mystery as a whole is really satisfying and clever without ever really breaching suspension of disbelief or being too complicated to keep track of (although there's definitely a good amount of trickery involved, it's the totally fair kind). You'll only like it if you like the mystery aspect a lot BUT if you do it's a pretty neat story, imo. Not being specific about stuff because the interest is all in the mystery and I don't want to spoil it at all, heh.… (mer)

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tombomp | 8 andra recensioner | Oct 31, 2023 |

Inspector French: Fatal Venture (Inspector French,… av Freeman Wills Crofts

Honestly while the detail about the setting up of the cruise ship is somewhat important when it comes to the murderer by the time he was murdered I really had a hankering to see how he was going to die and it did create a lot of suspects. It was full of contract negotiations and complicated lives and I had to almost force myself to pick it up to see when it was going to happen. There was also a shocking lack of jurisdictional issues when someone went missing and was noticed missing in Irish Waters but was suspected to have gone missing in Northern Ireland. Now that could have been a tangle... There was also nothing about having a gambling ship deal with the murky waters of Irish Law as well as British Law.
I wanted him dead and he did get killed and then unravelling the plot was the meat of the book, I just wish there had been less bread in the sandwich and more meat.… (mer)

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wyvernfriend | Jul 17, 2023 |

The sea mystery : an inspector French case av Freeman Wills Crofts

This was a good book, although I don’t consider it much of a « sea » mystery; the body is found in the river but the story moves to dry land very quickly. In this one I especially liked the emphasis on thorough analysis of all lines of inquiry (although French needs more of a team approach). Warning that this book spoils The Cask, an earlier entry in the series.

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rabbitprincess | 1 annan recension | Jul 3, 2023 |

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