Crofts, Freeman Wills

Crofts was born at 26 Waterloo Road, Dublin , Ireland . His father, also named Freeman Wills Crofts, was a lieutenant surgeon in Military Medical Service, but he died of a fever in Honduras before the birth of young Freeman Wills Crofts. The writer's mother, nee Celia Francis Wise, again married the Honorable Jonathan Harding, Vicar of Guilford, County Down, and Archdeacon Dromore, and Crofts was brought up in the home of Vicar Guilford. He studied at Methodist College and Campbell College in Belfast.

In 1896, at the age of seventeen, Crofts became the apprentice of his maternal uncle, Berkeley Dean Wise, who was the chief engineer of the Belfast and northern counties railway. In 1899, Crofts was appointed a junior assistant for the construction of Londonderry and Strabein, the expansion of the Donegal railway. In 1900, he became a district engineer in Coleraine for the Northern County LMS Committee with a salary of £ 100. In 1922, Crofts was promoted to chief assistant railway engineer, based in Belfast. He lived in Grianon in Jordanstown, a quiet village six miles north of Belfast, where it was convenient for Crofts every day to travel by train to the office of the railroad on York Road. One of the projects he worked on was the Green Viaduct design in Whiteabbey, near his home in Jordanstown. It was a significant 10-arch reinforced concrete viaduct, approved in 1927 and completed in 1934. On it was laid a new ring line, which eliminated the need for the reverse movement of trains between Belfast and the north-west in Greensland. Croft continued his engineering career until 1929. In his last assignment as an engineer, he was assigned by the government of Northern Ireland to lead the investigation on the Bann and Lough Nea drainage scheme.

In 1919, during his absence from work due to a long illness, Crofts wrote his first novel, Deadly Cargo (1920). For thirty years, Crofts continued to write and almost every year produced a book, as well as stories and plays.

He is best remembered for his favorite detective, Inspector Joseph French, who was introduced to Crofts’s fifth book, Inspector French's Most Confused Case (1924).

In 1929, he threw the railway engineering career and became a writer. He settled in the village of Blackheath, near Guilford, in Surrey, and a number of his books. Many of his stories have a railway theme, and his particular interest in the apparently indestructible alibi often focused on the intricacies of railway timetables. At the end of his life, he and his wife moved to Worthing, Sussex in 1953, where they lived until his death in 1957, in which his last book was published.

Crofts also wrote one religious book, The Four Gospels in One Story , several short stories and short plays for the BBC.

In 1912, he married Mary Bellas Canning, the daughter of John J. K. Canning from Coleraine, Ireland, a bank manager. They had no children.

Together with Dorothy Sayers , Agatha Christie , Gladys Mitchell , Nayo Marsh and many other prominent authors of detective prose, he was a member of the Detective Club .

In 1939 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Arts.

Crofts was not only a railway engineer and writer, but also an outstanding musician. He was an organist and choirmaster in the parish church of Killowen, Coleraine, the church of St. Patrick, Jordanstown and the parish church of St. Martin in Blackheath.

Crofts was respected not only by his regular readers, but also by his fellow writers of the so-called Golden Age of detective genre . Agatha Christie included parodies of stories about Inspector French along with Sherlock Holmes and her own Hercule Poirot in " Partners in Crime " (1929).

Raymond Chandler described Freeman Wills Crofts as "the most sensible builder of a detective novel of all, when he is not too keen on" (in " The Simple Art of Murder "). Crofts attention to detail and his concentration on the mechanics of crime make him the forerunner of the "police procedural" school of crime fiction.

However, it also prompted some lack of creativity of Crofts - Julian Simons described his style of writing and investigating his characters as "boring school lessons." This may explain why his name did not remain as familiar as other more colorful and creative writers of the Golden Age, although he had 15 books included in the Penguin Books "green" series, the best detective novels, and 36 of his books were reprinted in paperback in 2000.

Novels

• Deadly cargo (eng. The Cask) (1920)
• The Ponson Case (1921)
• The Pit-Prop Syndicate (1922)
• The Groote Park Murder (1923)
• Inspector French’s Most Confusing Case (Inspector French's Greatest Case) (1924)
• Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery (1926) aka The Cheyne Mystery
• Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy (1927) aka The Starvel Hollow Tragedy
• The Sea Mystery (1928)
• Cash kills (eng. "The Box Office Murders", or " The Purple Sickle Murders") (1929)
• Admiral’s last voyage (The Floating Admiral) (1930) ; a joint project of the Detective Club.
• Sir John Magill's Last Journey (1930)
• The Mystery of the Nymph (Eng. Mystery in the Channel) (1931) aka Mystery in the English Channel
• Sudden Death (born Sudden Death) (1932)
• Death on the tracks (English "Death on the Way" , or "Double Death") (1932)
• The Hog's Back Mystery (1933) aka The Strange Case of Dr. Earle
• The 12:30 from Croydon (1934) aka Wilful and Premeditated
• The Mystery of Southampton Bay (English Mystery on Southampton Water) (1934) aka Crime on the Solent
• Crime at Guildford (1935) aka The Crime at Nornes
• The Loss of the 'Jane Vosper' (1936)
• Man Overboard! (1936) aka Cold-Blooded Murder
• Found Floating (1937)
• The End of Andrew Harrison (1938) aka The Futile Alibi
• Antidote to Venom (1938)
• Fatal Venture (1939) aka Tragedy in the Hollow
• Golden Ashes (1940)
• James Tarren, the adventurer (eng. "James Tarrant, Adventurer", or "Circumstantial Evidence") (1941)
• The Losing Game (1941) aka A Losing Game
• Fear Comes to Chalfont (1942)
• The Affair at Little Wokeham (1943) aka Double Tragedy
• The Secret Enemy (eng. Enemy Unseen) (1945)
• Death of a Train (born Death of a Train) (1946)
• Young Robin Brand, Detective (1947) A Juvenile Detective Novel with Inspector French.
• The Elusive Killer (born Silence for the Murderer) (1949)
• Inspector French and Oil Case (English "French Strikes Oil", or "" Dark Journey) (1951)
• Smuggling Cargo (English Anything to Declare?) (1957)

Stories

Collections

Murderers Make Mistakes (1947)

Part One: Double Stories:

• • The old gun
  • The cliff path
  • The telephone call
  • The lower flat
  • The army truck
  • The invalid colonel
  • The hidden sten gun
  • The hunt ball
  • The avaricious moneylender
  • The evening visitor
  • The Enthusiastic Rabbit-Breeder
  • The retired wine merchant

Part Two: Single Stories:

• • The home guard trench
  • The playwright's manuscript
  • The limestone quarry
  • The l-shaped room
  • The stolen hand grenade
  • The relief signalman
  • The burning barn
  • The Solicitors' Holiday
  • The swinging boom
  • The fireside mountaineer
  • The waiting car

Many a Slip (1955)

• • The aspirins
  • Boomerang
  • The broken windscreen
  • The brother bing
  • Crime On The Footplate
  • The 8:12 from Waterloo
  • The flowing tide
  • The footbridge
  • Gull rock
  • The icy torrent
  • The medicine bottle
  • The mountain ledge
  • Mushroom patties
  • The new cement
  • The photograph
  • The ruined tower
  • The Sign Manual
  • The suitcase
  • Tea at four
  • The unseen observer
  • The upper flat

Mystery of the Sleeping Car Express and Other Stories (1956)

• • The Mystery of the Sleeping Car Express (1921)
  • Mr Pemberton's Commission
  • The Greuze (Inspector French)
  • The Level Crossing "(1933)
  • East Wind (Inspector French)
  • The parcel
  • The motive shows the man
  • The Affair at Saltover Priory (Inspector French)
  • The Landing Ticket (Inspector French)
  • The Raincoat (Inspector French)

The 9:50 Up Express and Other Mysteries . Crippen & Landru (2020)

Outside collections

• Fingerprints
• The faulty stroke
• The target
• Dark waters
• Nemesis
• Teamwork felonious
• Danger In Shroude Valley
• Perilous Journey (Robin Brand)
• Who Killed C @ ck Robin?

Theater productions

• Inspector French
• During the Night (Modified " Inspector French")

Radio plays

• The Nine Fifty Up Express

Other

• How to Write a Detective Novel
• The Four Gospels in One Story: written as a modern biography

Lost

These stories, as we know, were published, but there are no copies of the relevant publications and, probably, the texts of the stories have not been preserved.

• "Nemesis", published in Round About (Guildford Round Table Christmas Annual, 1933)

• Full bibliography (eng.)