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Rating: 
Summary: What Goes With the Pit Props?
Review: This is one of Freeman Wills Crofts' most interesting and frequently reprinted books. The initial puzzling discoveries are made by an ordinary young Englishman in the first chapter. He is holidaying in France. His amateur investigations suggest that a trade in pit props across the English Channel is a cover for a smuggling racket. His investigations are later linked with a Scotland Yard murder investigation. The Scotland Yard man is Inspector Willis of the Criminal Investigation Department. The author describes him as "plodding and tenacious to an extraordinary degree". In his next book, Freeman Wills Crofts developed this character, re-named him Joseph French, and retained him in all his subsequent books. Things which the author does very well are evident in this 1923 book. There are several long surveillance sequences. Seymour Merriman, the ordinary young Englishman, and his friend Claud Hilliard, take turns in secreting themselves in a barrel on a wharf in order to observe the unloading of a ship's cargo. Their amateur detecting, and Scotland Yard's better resourced investigating, provide absorbing reading throughout this relatively long yarn. There is also a love interest, and this is not something the author does well. A certain Miss Coburn, much like the heroine of a Victorian melodrama, reiterates from time to time "it can never be" whenever the ordinary young Englishman suggests marriage to her. Over all is the warm nostalgic glow that emanates from many of the 1920s examples of the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", a glow that is brightly reflected in this splendid reprint from The House of Stratus.
Rating:
Summary: What Goes With the Pit Props?
Review: This is one of Freeman Wills Crofts' most interesting and frequently reprinted books. The initial puzzling discoveries are made by an ordinary young Englishman in the first chapter. He is holidaying in France. His amateur investigations suggest that a trade in pit props across the English Channel is a cover for a smuggling racket. His investigations are later linked with a Scotland Yard murder investigation. The Scotland Yard man is Inspector Willis of the Criminal Investigation Department. The author describes him as "plodding and tenacious to an extraordinary degree". In his next book, Freeman Wills Crofts developed this character, re-named him Joseph French, and retained him in all his subsequent books. Things which the author does very well are evident in this 1923 book. There are several long surveillance sequences. Seymour Merriman, the ordinary young Englishman, and his friend Claud Hilliard, take turns in secreting themselves in a barrel on a wharf in order to observe the unloading of a ship's cargo. Their amateur detecting, and Scotland Yard's better resourced investigating, provide absorbing reading throughout this relatively long yarn. There is also a love interest, and this is not something the author does well. A certain Miss Coburn, much like the heroine of a Victorian melodrama, reiterates from time to time "it can never be" whenever the ordinary young Englishman suggests marriage to her. Over all is the warm nostalgic glow that emanates from many of the 1920s examples of the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction".
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