The Affair at Little Wokeham, a.k.a. Double Tragedy (1943), was the last of Freeman Wills Crofts’s books to be recently reprinted by Harper Collins in these lovely paperback editions. Fear not, I have acquired the rest of Crofts’s oeuvre — though if you have an unread House of Stratus edition of Death of a Train (1946), do get in touch — and shall indeed complete the Full Crofts here on The Invisible Event, but let’s spare a thought for what might have been: when the Inspector French TV show seemed a likely prospect, we could have had all of Crofts’s novels for grown-ups in bookshops in the 21st century. Alas, Utopia must remain a dream.

The twenty-fourth case to feature Inspector Joseph French, this is another of Crofts’s inverted mysteries, this time — ever the experimentalist — told from five different perspectives, as Guy Plant shuffles an elderly relative off this mortal coil in order to ease his financial woes. Interestingly, this is the first of Crofts’s inverted mysteries in which the killer is not sympathetic, having got himself into this position through nothing more than hubris — an attitude neatly mirrored in the way he asked his secretary to marry him, unheedful of the bind the proposal put her in (Crofts is always very good at the impact of apparently minor decisions on the working man or woman).

I enjoyed the characterisation of the various people in the first third, such as boastful cat’s-paw Arthur Crossley (“Like Iago, none had made so many journeys or seen so many wonders as he had.”) and the mindset of Plant once the murder is done (“[W]hen he…saw the outline of a policeman at the door, he had to fight hard to prevent panic again seizing him. That civil-spoken man and all his kind were now his mortal enemies, they were out remorselessly for nothing less than his life.”). Interesting, too, how the various pressures felt by local medic Dr. Anthony Mallaby set French off on the wrong track for quite some time, another new idea for Crofts.

For such a reported dullard, there’s still a nice sense of French as a proud professional man…

At one time French had taken his own photographs and prints, but now he delegated this work to specialists, partly because they theoretically did it better — though this he would never allow — but principally because it left him free to go on more quickly with other parts of the investigation.

…and Crofts continues to find new ways to introduce ingenious detection, with excellent work on footprints and tire marks forming the backbone of the emerging thesis of the crime. For my money, no-one writes such a clearly- and cleanly-limned investigation as FWC, with each step considered intelligently and contributing to the whole picture in a meaningful way. This means that he’s not going to spring any surprises on you — those anticipating a savage commentary on crime and detection à la Anthony Berkeley should look elsewhere — but for patient, perceptive progress there really is no-one better.

Casually throwing in the sort of astute reasoning that others would build a whole plot strand around — the birthday party giving someone the idea to commit the crime a year later, say — and dismissing as a mere trifle the careful lies others could hinge a plot on (“Those jets haven’t been cleaned…”), French’s investigation is as meticulous as you would hope. Crofts also lets others have their moment (“You’re a fine detective, madam.”) and keeps his sleuth both human (chaffing a brother officer about carrying out an illegal search, something French did plenty of before Crofts realised he shouldn’t his promotion) and fallible enough to preclude any accusations of going-through-the-motions: for all his perseverance, French comes up against a blank wall several times, and it’s gorgeous to see. And, interestingly, it’s by incorrectly surmising something that didn’t actually happen that he gets on the right track in the closing stages.

Having dodged talking about the war in his previous wartime books, it’s intriguing to see Crofts set this up as one of French’s old cases that he, the detective, is only just getting round to telling his chronicler about. That we’re near Guildford and reference is made to “that Earle case” but nothing said about the Nornes business makes me think this is probably set in 1934, but that’s doubtless me overthinking things. Also, I find it hilarious that the deceased ring-fenced money in his will for the building of a memorial to himself; I’m sure that kind of thing happened all the time, but it’s a piece of magnificent arrogance that fits in perfectly.

Having read the majority of Crofts’s output, I’d say The Affair at Little Wokeham is perhaps the perfect median of the French canon. It starts well, maintains a good pace and keen interest, and keeps up a solid rate of progress without ever doing anything to convince the doubters or dissuade the faithful. Crofts wrote better, but to see him still tinkering after 28 books is amazing, and if you’ve enjoyed some of his slightly more pedestrian strong efforts — Found Floating (1937), Fatal Venture (1939), James Tarrant, Adventurer (1941) — you’ll definitely get more out of this one. Meanwhile, I only have five FWC novels and three anthologies of short fiction until I’ve completed his non-collaborative output, so I’m going to have a lie down and try to contemplate what the world looks like when those are read.

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