Anthony Mallaby’s life has led him to Little Wokeham. A doctor in the declining years of his career for a number of reasons, he has taken the role of a GP in the village. He soon becomes close to the Winnington family, and to young Christina Winnington in particular.
However, murder is in the offing, and a murderer who is determined to cover their tracks so thoroughly that the police will never suspect him. But he wasn’t counting on Inspector Joseph French.
Oh bottoms, it’s an inverted mystery. Crofts did a few of these – this one is the twentieth French mystery by the way – and it’s never my favourite genre. I much prefer the whodunit to the how are they going to get away with it. Poker Face is probably the main exception to this, but generally, they’re not my thing.
There is a variation (at least in my meagre experience) here, and that is the shifting focus around the characters, from Mallaby, Christina, the murderer, the accomplice and, once the murder occurs, Inspector French. I found the build-up to the murder pretty slow, and, yes, rather dull.
It picks up when French appears – a bit – but it’s only the final third or so when it really caught my attention. The murderer’s plan, which does hinge on the accomplice not saying anything, goes off the rails fairly quickly when he has to commit a second murder and, to be honest, it doesn’t take much for French to work out who did it and how.
The last chapter, with the villain on the run, was rather fun, with the question of whether they were going to get away with it one of the more intriguing bits of the book. It might have helped if the villain was even remotely sympathetic – it’s fair to say they get what they deserve.
One other thing worth noting tie back to my interest in books written during the war when the outcome was uncertain but with a wartime setting. Crofts was still writing during the war but it wasn’t until the war was over that he wrote books, Enemy Unseen and Death of A Train, that were set during the conflict. Might take a look at those – I should be clear, I do generally like Crofts’ work but this one generally didn’t click for me.
This wasn’t the one to snap me out of my current wave of reader’s block, I’m afraid. All sorts of things are distracting me at the moment, so I might have to resort to an old favourite or two for my next couple of reads…
In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel 
A few months back I finally got around to Death of a Train as I’ve been reading the later books in order; I’ve had a green Penguin of it for decades but can’t remember reading it before. I think Crofts is one of the most underrated and reliably strong authors of them all. Unlike some more heralded writers, he doesn’t have much in the way of standouts, they’re just all… er… soundly built (thanks RC). Death of a Train is unusual in the series in that… well, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that it ends up with French basically winning WWII single-handedly. Yet, this being FWC, we’re not in “Lewker in Norway” territory by a very long chalk. It’s perhaps also as near as the French series comes to a thriller (which isn’t that near), yet it’s got all the Croftsian virtues, in that, taken on its own terms, it hangs together superbly. You might need a tad more suspension of disbelief than usual – again, it’s no spoiler to suggest that wartime Prime Ministerial security might’ve been a smidgeon tighter than is portrayed here but there are no real leaps, just French doggedly following the trail and refusing to delegate even the smallest task to junior ranks, which is why he has to win the war on his own. I’ve now read all but the very last in the series and I’ve at least enjoyed every single one (so far). Some slightly more than others, but no stinkers.
LikeLiked by 1 person