It seemed a foolproof plan for a new sort of cruise ship – well-fitted out, cruising around the coast of Great Britain, with passengers embarking and disembarking where they choose. Harry Morrison and Charles Bristow just needed an investor – but in John Stott, they may have bitten off more than they can chew. By the time the ship has cast off, changes have been made to the plan.
The changes seem to be bringing in money though, so when murder occurs, the newly formed company is in disarray. Enter Inspector French, first appointed to look at problems in the business, but once the murder happens, this obviously becomes his first priority. The only problem, everyone seems to have a cast-iron alibi.
I continue to ricochet around the works of Freeman Wills Crofts – if you want to see the books reviewed chronologically, pop over to The Invisible Event – landing this time on the nineteenth outing for Inspector French, and we’re back on the ocean wave. Not sure why the recent reprint decided to put an aeroplane on the cover.
I’d advise you not to know too much going into this one – the first half builds to the murder and its immediate aftermath, and it’s one of those where it’s not that clear who is going to get it in the neck. This section is from the point of view of Morrison as his dream ebbs and flows, ebbs and flows and to me, it was the more interesting half of the book. Given what he does at the end of his section, he is surprisingly absent from a lot of the second section, focussing, unsurprisingly, on French as he follows his usual meticulous investigation methods, although this time with his wife in tow.
I did find the early part of this investigation a bit of a drag because as French gets up to speed, we do go over some stuff we already know. However, as it becomes clear that everyone has a perfect alibi and French’s many theories get shot down in flames, the mystery really grips as to how anyone could have done it – and even when French does pinpoint his killer, the method of how they did it still eludes him. And it’s a really clever method too…
All in all, yet another mark in the column marked “What idiot called this author humdrum?” Definitely worth your time.
Oh, but do read The Loss Of The Jane Vosper first, as he casually spoils it, and it’s an even better book…
In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel 
It’s an interesting glimpse into a time when the notion of going on a cruise for the cruise alone and not the destination was new and novel.
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That’s something I love to see in Crofts and Rhode as well – snapshots of life that have long changed.
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Glad you enjoyed this — not the best, but a good second-tier mystery and resolution in the Crofts canon. Lovely that these books are so available now.
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Are all the French titles available/going to be available?
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Between HarperCollins and the British Library the first 24 French titles, up to The Affair at Little Wokeham (1943) are in print. So the last five novels and three short story collections await reprinting…which, since I want to replace my old and battered copy of Death of a Train, I’m quite keen to see happen!
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Did I hear something about the HarperCollins reprints stopping? Or did I imagine that?
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There haven’t been any for a while — I’ve just checked and Wokeham came out in January 2023, so that’s two and a half years since the last one…which, I’m imagining, means they’re on pause, at least, for the time being.
But if people go out and buy them, maybe we’ll get more…
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I’ll see what I can do to inspire people 🙂
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Crofts is one of my very favourites. I recently read Death of a Train, at least, I’m sure I must’ve read it before as I’ve had a green Penguin for at least 20-odd years. More recently I’d kept putting it off because the blurb says it’s an espionage story. Actually it’s more of an “Inspector French wins World War II” story only not in a Lewker in Norway kind of way. OK, it doesn’t stand up to real plausibility scrutiny (personally I suspect Prime Ministerial security might’ve been a tad tighter) but it’s utterly gripping.
Anyway, I’ve now read all of the French novels except the last two, copies of which I have waiting to be enjoyed, and two of the four pre-French books. The weakest of them have been really good, but the best ones are as good as anything in the genre. Humdrum? I suppose that’s because he does detail and his plots [insert “soundest builder” bit here] hang together in such a way that even when he’s pushing plausibility, you either don’t notice or don’t care. Above all, because of the way everything interlocks and proceeds sequentially, I never have that “er… what just happened?” feeling I get with some other authors.
Anyway, while not all of the books are yet back in print, most of them can be picked up, the only one for which I paid more than a tenner or so was French Strikes Oil, a HB with DJ in nice condition, and that was within my limit for a book I really wanted. I have a lot of green Penguins and Stratus reprints from a couple of decades or so ago, plus the BLCC and a few of the more recent HC reprints, a Pan Silence for the Murderer…
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