- Paperback: 376 pages
- Publisher: House of Stratus; New edition edition (16 Oct 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1842323776
- ISBN-13: 978-1842323779
- Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 13.6 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 412,081 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Book Description
'Having unloaded the dead body of the victim from Imperial Air-liner, Mr Crofts flashes us back to the beginning of the drama and thereafter shows us the crime through the eyes of the criminal . . . He constructs his alibi with immense elaboration . . . the story is highly successful, and Mr Crofts is to be congratulated upon his experiment.' - Dorothy L Sayers in The Sunday Times
About the Author
Freeman Wills Crofts was born in Dublin in 1879 and died in 1957. He worked for a Northern Irish railway company as an engineer until 1929, before turning to detective fiction His plots reveal his mathematical training and he specialised in the seemingly unbreakable alibi, laying layer upon layer within his stories. He loved ships and trains and the intricacies of transport timetables feature in many of his stories. Crofts' best-known character is Inspector Joseph French. French appears for the first time in Inspector French's Greatest Case. He is a detective who achieves his results through dogged persistence.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Several detective fiction writers of the 1930s set up a murder occurring during a flight over the English Channel. Freeman Wills Crofts, a retired railway engineer, depicts one here, and of course describes the passenger plane with an engineer's eye for detail: the criss-cross struts connecting the wings, the great propeller, the bus-like interior with rows of seats for forty passengers. Surely a delight for nostalgia buffs! Another luminary in the "golden age" of detective fiction, Dorothy L Sayers, congratulated Freeman Wills Crofts not only on the excellence of all this, but also for attempting a new experiment in detective fiction.
The experiment was to present detection in reverse - to allow us to see the crime and the alibi construction through the eyes of the criminal instead of the detective. Having unloaded the body from a British plane landing in France, Crofts flashes us back to the beginning of the drama. We are thereafter in the company of the young man who is facing bankruptcy, who hopes to tempt a rich young woman into marriage, and who has a rich uncle whose death could solve all the young man's difficulties.
So the fascination for the reader here is not in seeing how Inspector French moves from clue to clue in detecting and solving a crime, but in seeing how well the criminal can devise a murder and an alibi that will ensure he is never suspected or charged.
The result is eminently successful. To satisfy readers who expect Inspector French to feature in all his books, Crofts provides glimpses of him from time to time, lets us see him laying his hand on the criminal's shoulder towards the end of the book, and subsequently allows French to explain how he broke the alibi. Crofts provides further satisfaction by allowing French to be promoted to chief-inspector.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A not entirely successful experiment: instead of focusing on the activities of Inspector French, the story is seen entirely from the perspective of the murderer, a businessman facing bankruptcy who deludes himself into the belief that his two murders are committed for the greater good, and seems to suffer from Macbeth’s conscience. Although the murderer is better-drawn than most Croftsian cardboard figures, the other characters are all flat, and there are no twists in the tale. French appears only two or three times during the course of the story, and, rather than detecting, explains how the murderer committed his crime in rather laborious detail. Many scenes show this to be a pale imitation of Francis Iles’s Malice Aforethought.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
A successful experiment in detection in reverse.
31 July 2001
Several detective fiction writers of the 1930s set up a murder occurring during a flight over the English Channel. Freeman Wills Crofts, a retired railway engineer, depicts one here, and of course describes the passenger plane with an engineer's eye for detail: the criss-cross struts connecting the wings, the great propeller, the bus-like interior with rows of seats for forty passengers, etc. Surely a delight for nostalgia buffs! Another luminary in the "golden age" of detective fiction, Dorothy L Sayers, congratulated Freeman Wills Crofts not only on the excellence of all this, but also for attempting a new experiment in detective fiction.
The experiment was to present detection in reverse - to allow us to see the crime and the alibi construction through the eyes of the criminal instead of the detective. Having unloaded the body from a British plane landing in France, Crofts flashes us back to the beginning of the drama. We are thereafter in the company of the young man who is facing bankruptcy, who hopes to tempt a rich young woman into marriage, and who has a rich uncle whose death could solve all the young man's difficulties.
So the fascination for the reader here is not in seeing how Inspector French moves from clue to clue in detecting and solving a crime, but in seeing how well the criminal can devise a murder and an alibi that will ensure he is never suspected or charged.
The result is eminently successful. To satisfy readers who expect Inspector French to feature in all his books, Crofts provides glimpses of him from time to time, lets us see him laying his hand on the criminal's shoulder towards the end of the book, and subsequently allows French to explain how he broke the alibi. Crofts provides further satisfaction by allowing French to be promoted to chief-inspector.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Singing Bone Diluted
12 July 2003
A not entirely successful experiment: instead of focusing on the activities of Inspector French, the story is seen entirely from the perspective of the murderer, a businessman facing bankruptcy who deludes himself into the belief that his two murders are committed for the greater good, and seems to suffer from Macbeth's conscience. Although the murderer is better-drawn than most Croftsian cardboard figures, the other characters are all flat, and there are no twists in the tale. French appears only two or three times during the course of the story, and, rather than detecting, explains how the murderer committed his crime in rather laborious detail. Many scenes show this to be a pale imitation of Francis Iles's Malice Aforethought.
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