Creator / Freeman Wills Crofts

"Of all the jobs that fell to French, the investigation of the life, habits, and human relationships of a given individual was that which he found most tedious."

— Sir John Magill's Last Journey

Freeman Wills Crofts (1879-1957) was the author of 35 detective novels, published between the 1920s and 1950s. At the time his sales figures were up there with Agatha Christie herself, but his books' hold on the public imagination hasn't lasted to anything like the same degree.

The lead detective in most of Crofts' books was Inspector French of Scotland Yard. In his day job Crofts was a civil engineer, and he applied the same attention to detail to the plots of his mysteries.

Mr Crofts' works provide examples of:

• The Alibi: Almost a Creator Thumbprint; the detective nearly always has to break what appears to be an unimpeachable alibi, frequently with the aid of railway timetables. As Dorothy L. Sayers remarked, eventually the reader begins to suspect the person with the best alibi straight away. For example, in Mystery in the Channel, one suspect is ruled out of consideration because his launch couldn't have reached the scene of the crime at its maximum speed. He'd fitted an outboard motor to the launch, which he then threw overboard before the police examined the boat. Crofts eventually subverted this facet of his writing in Death on the Way. Inspector French proves that a suspect faked his alibi, and arrests him — but it turns out he wasn't the murderer, and faked the alibi only because he knew he couldn't prove his innocence. And again in Fatal Venture, when multiple suspects have suspiciously-strong alibis that would have been possible to fake.
• Anachronistic Clue: In Fatal Venture, the clue that enables French to prove a photograph was faked is that it shows flowers in bloom that wouldn't have been when the picture was supposedly taken.
• Bastard Bastard: In The Groote Park Murder, the murderer turns out to be the victim's illegitimate half-brother, who killed him and stole his identity.
• Blackmail: The Cheyne Mystery and The Loss of the Jane Vosper both contain criminals who make a living by blackmail, quite separately from their involvement in the A-plots of the books. In The Starvel Tragedy Roper's blackmail is far more closely connected with the solution of the mystery.
• Blackmail Backfire:
  • In Mystery on Southampton Water, the directors of the Chayle cement works suspect that their rivals at Joymount have stolen their new secret process and killed the night watchman into the bargain. They approach their counterparts with an offer: They want Joymount to license their process and pay 75% of the profits, or they will tell the police what they know. By invitation, they make an evening visit to Joymount to finalise the terms of the agreement... and on the way back, their boat suddenly explodes.
  • In 12:30 From Croydon the first victim's butler threatens the murderer with exposure unless he pays up. The murderer decides that even if he did pay up, the man couldn't be trusted to keep his mouth shut, and instead kills him.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Happens during the capture of the murderer in Mystery in the Channel. The man on the receiving end not only drops the gun, but loses his thumb.
• Chekhov's Hobby: Always be wary of characters who have a workshop or garden shed where they like to tinker. They tend to use them for less innocent purposes, such as cutting copies of stolen keys or making an improvised bludgeon from a length of lead pipe.
• Complexity Addiction: The opening of Crofts' short story "Unbreakable Alibi" describes this as the murderer's fatal flaw:
  Always he would reject the simple for something more ingenious and complex. When he murdered Jack Fleet it was this trait which cost him his life...
• Continuity Nod:
  • In The Hog's Back Mystery, French's investigation takes him to a construction site on the Guildford bypass. He finds it more understandable thanks to his experience of the railway works in Death on the Way.
  • In Sir John Magill's Last Journey, French, on the way to visit Dartmoor Prison, pays a quick visit to catch up with Maxwell Cheyne (from The Cheyne Mystery) and his family.
• Conviction by Contradiction: It's frequently the case that the solution of a case lies in finding some minor discrepancy in the evidence. However, it's rare that the discrepancy leads directly to an arrest; instead, the police use it to find more concrete evidence.
  • In Crime at Guildford, the discrepancy is between two witnesses' statements: did Minter, the accountant, arrive at the office five minutes before or five minutes after his colleagues?
  • Subverted in Death on the Way, where the character arrested for having faked his alibi turns out not to be guilty after all.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive:
  • The murder victims in Mystery in the Channel were financiers absconding with thousands of their customers' life savings.
  • The suspects in Crime at Guildford are the directors and officers of a failing jewellery business; the guilty men decided to steal the company's stock of precious stones before they had to be sold off to pay the creditors.
  • In Mystery on Southampton Water the quick-drying cement industry is a cut-throat business, with executives willing to resort to industrial espionage, blackmail and murder to gain a commercial advantage.
• Crime Reconstruction: At the end of Sir John Magill's Last Journey, French reconstructs the journey in question, demonstrating how and when the victim was murdered.
• Death by Falling Over: This turns out to be the solution of The Ponson case — the victim tripped and fell. Since he was in the process of paying off a blackmailer, the other characters present tried to hush up the episode so his secret wouldn't come to light, succeeding only in making it look like a fiendish murder plot.
• Defiant Captive: Molly Moran in The Box Office Murders, after her kidnapping by the bad guys.
• Disability Alibi: One suspect in Sir John Magill's Last Journey is ruled out of consideration because he had a leg injury — nothing serious, but enough to stop him taking any part in the murder. The doctor who examined him is adamant that the injury was genuine. It was a real injury, but its timing was faked; it actually happened after the murder.
• Enemy Civil War: At the end of The Cheyne Mystery, when French arrives he finds that the gang he was pursuing got into a quarrel about the distribution of the loot and pretty much wiped each other out.
• Fair Play Mystery: Golden Ashes has a footnote at the point French has his "Eureka!" Moment, stating that the reader now has all the facts to solve the mystery. The Hog's Back Mystery goes further: each clue in French's summation has a note showing the reader where they could have learned it.
• Famed In-Story: French's cover is blown in Fatal Venture when he's recognised by someone who saw him give evidence in the trial of the murderer from The Loss of the Jane Vosper.
• Flat Character: As the page quote suggests, Crofts favoured plot at the expense of characterisation.
• The Gambling Addict: Stott's nephew in Fatal Venture has a weakness for the tables — unfortunate, when the venture of the title is a cruise ship with an on-board casino.
• Gasoline Dousing: The murderer in Mystery in the Channel attempts a Taking You with Me by dousing the surroundings in petrol — both he and Inspector French are armed, so a shot from either will start a fire that kills both.
• Going Down with the Ship: The Loss of the Jane Vosper opens with the eponymous ship sinking because of mysterious explosions in the cargo hold. The captain doesn't literally go down with the ship, but he makes sure all the other members of his crew are safely in the lifeboats before he leaves the ship to join them.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: In The Pit-Prop Syndicate, the protagonist is asked this when he's caught by one of the members of the syndicate. He quickly invents an account of having left a letter with his bank manager, which will be sent to Scotland Yard if he should not return safely.
• Improvised Screwdriver: In The Box Office Murders, Molly Moran constructs a screwdriver from a filed-down penny, fire tongs and a length of cord.
• Insurance Fraud: The murderer's plot in Golden Ashes. The murder is only committed because the victim stumbled across evidence that would have exposed the fraud.
• Look Behind You: Done non-verbally in The Sea Mystery — French, held by the murderer at gunpoint, conveys by facial expressions alone that he can see his colleague entering the room and creeping up behind the murderer.
• Love Makes You Evil: The viewpoint characters in the reverse-whodunnits 12:30 From Croydon and Antidote To Venom decide on murder, in part, because they need money to marry, or carry on an affair with, the woman of their dreams.
• MacGyvering: After her kidnapping, Molly Moran is locked in an attic with no way out except a skylight that's screwed shut. With only the contents of the room she's in, she manages to create an Improvised Screwdriver to open the skylight, and paper aeroplanes to launch through it and call for help.
• Make It Look Like an Accident:
  • The first murder in Death On The Way appears at first glance to be an industrial accident.
  • The deaths in The Starvel Tragedy are initially presumed to be the result of an accidental fire.
  • The first death in Mystery on Southampton Water is elaborately set up to look like a car accident. The police take hardly any time to spot that it isn't.
• Map All Along: In The Cheyne Mystery, one of the clues is a mysterious diagram drawn on a piece of linen, covered with irregularly-placed circles containing numbers, letters and wavy lines, and the phrase "England expects every man to do his duty". French and his officers eventually realise that it should be superimposed on a map of England, with the wavy lines matching the coastline; then the numbered circles indicate particular towns. In turn, the names of the towns produce a textual message, which describes a location in the Atlantic.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: The Pit-Prop Syndicate begins with the viewpoint character noticing that a lorry marked “The Landes Pit-Prop Syndicate, No. 4.” has unexpectedly changed to “The Landes Pit-Prop Syndicate, No. 3.” He's sufficiently puzzled that he and a friend investigate, and over the course of the book the criminal activities of the syndicate are brought to light.
• Most Writers Are Writers:
  • Betty Stanton in Golden Ashes is an aspiring novelist.
  • Marjorie Lawes in The Hog's Back Mystery writes "simple tales of the loves of earls and typists, turned out in bulk."
• Plucky Girl: Molly Moran — it gets her into serious trouble when she can't resist doing a little investigating on her own account.
• Police Procedural: Crofts' works, particularly The Loss of the Jane Vosper, are sometimes considered to be prototypes of the genre.
• Quicksand Sucks: Discussed Trope in The Sea Mystery, where two men are supposed to have drowned in a bog on Dartmoor. The local police sergeant explains how it's possible to escape from such a situation by lying on one's back. Later, French wonders if a dead body could have been sunk in the bog, but the sergeant is dubious: unless weighted the body would float, while the person carrying the body would be vertical and so sink. So they'd have needed to support themselves on a plank while dumping the body, and that would have left obvious traces.
• Recorded Audio Alibi: In Mystery on Southampton Water, one of the conspirators records his half of a conversation on a gramophone. While he is committing his crime, his accomplice goes into the room where the man is supposed to be, plays the recording, and speaks his half of the conversation, thus making it seem to the witnesses outside that both men are there. Inspector French considers this to be a "very old trick" (the book was published in 1934).
• Revealing Cover-Up: Had the gang in The Box Office Murders not taken to murdering the box-office girls whom they suspected knew too much about them, Scotland Yard would never have suspected their existence.
• Reverse Whodunnit:
  • With a twist in Mystery on Southampton Water — we are shown the original murder, the killer's attempt to cover it up, and Inspector French's investigation. Then there's a second murder where we don't get to see who did it or how.
  • 12:30 From Croydon is a straight example: the main protagonist is the murderer, whom we follow from the moment he contemplates committing murder, all the way to his trial and conviction. We only see what he sees of Inspector French's investigation, which is hardly anything. Then in the final two chapters, French retells events from his perspective and we see all the clues the murderer never even knew were there.
  • In Antidote To Venom the viewpoint character is the murderer's accomplice rather than the actual murderer, so although he's morally and legally just as culpable, even he doesn't know exactly how the crime was done.
• Rube Goldberg Device: The mechanism used in Golden Ashes to set fire to Forde Manor — opening a certain desk drawer triggers a switch, which causes water to start draining out of a steel drum. When the water has drained, a float in the drum reaches the bottom, closing a circuit that powers a car cigarette lighter.
• Satchel Switcheroo:
  • In The Cask — there are two casks, both of which started out containing similar groups of statuary. By the start of the book, one now contains a murdered body and gold sovereigns. The confusion is retrospective as the detectives try to work out which cask was where, when, and what it contained at the time.
  • Used on a far larger scale in The Loss of the Jane Vosper, where the villains perform a switcheroo on a consignment of 350 generators.
• Schmuck Bait: In The Box Office Murders, French tells Molly Moran to avoid two areas of London where the criminal gang are known to be operating. This advice doesn't have the effect he hoped.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Parry, the first viewpoint character in Death on the Way, was invalided out of the army in 1918 with shell-shock.
• Shout-Out: In Sir John Magill's Last Journey, French tells a colleague to "use your grey cells, as that Belgian would say."
  • In The Box Office Murders, on trying to figure out what was hidden in a now-empty secret compartment, French ruefully wishes for the forensic skills of Dr. Thorndyke.
• Sink the Lifeboats: In the backstory of The Cheyne Mystery, a German U-Boat commander torpedoed a liner, and then sank the lifeboats so there were no survivors. It turns out he didn't do it just for the sake of cruelty, but to conceal exactly where the ship went down.
• Slipping a Mickey:
  • In The Sea Mystery French suspects that a night-watchman he interviews is holding something back. It turns out that on the crucial night he fell asleep at his post; since this never happened before or since, French suspects that the man's flask of tea must have been drugged.
  • In Mystery on Southampton Water, one executive is drugged so that copies of his keys (which he always keeps with him) can be made.
• Smug Snake: The villain of Mystery in the Channel, who when cornered by French mocks him for taking so long to find him.
• Stern Chase: Chapter 12 of The Ponson Case is called "A Stern Chase", and is Exactly What It Says on the Tin — but written from the point of view of the pursuing detective, rather than the absconding suspect.
• Switching P.O.V.: The story often begins with the point of view of the person who discovers the crime, then switches to Inspector French once he's called in. Some notable examples are:
  • The Cask: The first chapter is written from the point of view of the man who finds the body; the next two-thirds of the novel follow the police inspector investigating the crime and arresting the prime suspect; and in the last third, the protagonist is a private detective trying to disprove the police case.
  • The Cheyne Mystery: Maxwell Cheyne is the protagonist for over half of the book before he finally calls in Inspector French.
• Taking You with Me: A couple of times the villain, facing arrest, attempts to kill both themself and Inspector French (one even pulls out a hand grenade).
• Trapped by Gambling Debts: Crofts' villains are fond of this, usually luring their mark into a rigged game or series of games in the first place.
• The Wicked Stage: Characters who are actors, such as Lyde in "Crime at Guildford'', tend to use their impersonation talents for nefarious purposes.
• The X of Y: All the chapter names in Golden Ashes are of this form.