Part of Series
Leaving her home, the isolated house on the Yorkshire moors called Starvel, Ruth Averill heads off to stay with a family friend. Little does she know that she will never see it again: the following evening a fire utterly destroys the building, killing her rich and reclusive uncle, along with the two servants. At first this is seen as nothing but a horrible tragedy—a tragedy that’s compounded when it’s discovered that the vast majority of Ruth’s legacy from her uncle was paper money stored in a safe that didn’t survive the fire. The safe, however, was reputed for being fireproof, and soon an errant £20 note brings Inspector French onto the scene. This, the third in the Inspector French series, was inspired by a real blaze that occurred near where Freeman Wills Crofts was living; but the layered drama that unfolds after, and Inspector French’s determination to find the next piece of evidence that will uncover the whole mystery, is invention in Crofts’ classic style—but with a little help from his wife.
Author
Born in Dublin of English stock, Freeman Wills Crofts was educated at Methodist and Campbell Colleges in Belfast and at age 17 he became a civil engineering pupil, apprenticed to his uncle, Berkeley D Wise who was the chief engineer of the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway (BNCR). In 1899 he became a fully fledged railway engineer before becoming a district engineer and then chief assistant engineer for the BNCR. He married in 1912, Mary Bellas Canning, a bank manager's daughter. His writing career began when he was recovering from a serious illness and his efforts were rewarded when his first novel 'The Cask' was accepted for publication by a London publishing house. Within two decades the book had sold 100,000 copies. Thereafter he continued to write in his spare time and produced a book a year through to 1929 when he was obliged to stop working through poor health. When he and his wife moved to Guildford, England, he took up writing full time and not surprisingly many of his plots revolved around travel and transport, particularly transport timetables and many of them had a Guildford setting. In retirement from engineering, as well as writing, he also pursued his other interests, music, in which he was an organist and conductor, gardening, carpentry and travel. He wrote a mystery novel almost every year until his death and in addition he produced about 50 short stories, 30 radio plays for the BBC, a number of true crime works, a play, 'Sudden Death', a juvenile mystery, 'Young Robin Brand, Detective', and a religious work, 'The Four Gospels in One Story'. His best known character is Inspector Joseph French, who featured in 30 detective novels between 1924 and 1957. And Raymond Chandler praised his plots, calling him "the soundest builder of them all". Gerry Wolstenholme May 2010
