A classic crime novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’, featuring Inspector French, coming soon to television.
The new Sir Geoffrey Buller is earning his living in Chicago when he unexpectedly inherits his title, an English baronetcy, and Forde Manor in Surrey, complete with its vast collection of priceless works of art. His widowed housekeeper, who knows a thing or two, is surprised to discover that Sir Geoffrey is having his pictures cleaned. But then disaster strikes! A devastating fire, a missing artist and a lot of insurance money – from a mosaic of detail, Inspector French must reconstruct the pattern of a most cunning and complex crime…
Reviews
“A detective novel by Mr. Wills Crofts is always an event to those who know … Mr. Crofts is among the few muscular writers of detective fiction. He has never let me down.”
HAROLD NICHOLSON, DAILY EXPRESS
“Good, sound, absorbing … and Inspector French, comforting as ever.”
Observer
About the author
Once dubbed ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’, Freeman Wills Crofts was an Irish railway engineer whose brilliant first mystery novel, The Cask, was motivated by an extended illness in 1919. Outselling Agatha Christie, and renowned for his ingenious plotting and meticulous attention to detail, Crofts followed up with The Ponson Case (1921) and no less than thirty books featuring the iconic Scotland Yard detective, Inspector French.
