A Losing Game

I have read a number of books by Freeman Wills Crofts before and always enjoyed them (indeed he is one of my favourite "Golden Age" authors) and so expected no less than excellence from this book, first published in 1941. It is billed as an Inspector French mystery though the detective does not appear until quite some way into the book.

The set-up is good, involving a blackmailer who is found dead in a burnt down house. The coroner determines that the man did not die in the fire, and was dead beforehand which turns the case into murder. A young foolish man becomes the main suspect and is charged by police even though we know he is innocent but there is a lot of evidence against him. Luckily, the man's sister know Inspector French from the Yard and helps bring him into the case.

At first it does not look like French can find the real culprit, but some detailed and well thought out plotting and deduction from the evidence helps turn the tide. The ending really ups the pace as the murderer begins to compound his crimes in order to escape...

An excellent read, Inspector French is a very good character. A thoughtful and serious policeman who isn't tortured by inner demons as fictional detectives so often became in more recent decades. A complicated crime and an enjoyable unravelling of the case.