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Inspector French's Greatest Case

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Inspector French's Greatest Case
First edition
AuthorFreeman Wills Crofts
LanguageEnglish
SeriesInspector French
GenreDetective
PublisherCollins
Publication date
1924
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint
Followed byThe Cheyne Mystery 
Websitehttps://standardebooks.org/ebooks/freeman-wills-crofts/inspector-frenchs-greatest-case

Inspector French's Greatest Case is a 1924 mystery detective novel by Freeman Wills Crofts.[1] It is the first in his series of novels featuring Inspector Joseph French, a Scotland Yard detective of the Golden Age known for his methodical technique.[2][3] Like much of the following series the plot mixes the traditional form of the puzzle mystery with that of a police procedural. French has to carefully study railway and shipping timetables and crack a cipher in order to solve his case.

Synopsis

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A robbery of the safe of a diamond merchant in London's Hatton Garden leaves one of the firm's veteran employees dead. Summoned to handle the case French pursues disparate clues over a number of weeks with some of the trails turning out to be dead ends. His travels take him from the capital to Southampton and a variety of destinations on the Continent including Amsterdam, the Swiss Alps, Barcelona and Le Havre. Eventually he believes he has hit on the solution: a former West End actress has adopted an elaborate disguise to carry out the disposal of the diamonds and raise ready cash to flee on a liner heading for South America. He races to Portugal in the hope of catching her and her partner-in-crime, whose ultimate identity gives him a great shock.

References

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  1. ^ Reilly p.396
  2. ^ Evans p.250
  3. ^ Herbert p.76

Bibliography

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  • Evans, Curtis. Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961. McFarland, 2014.
  • Herbert, Rosemary. Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing. Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • Reilly, John M. Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers. Springer, 2015.
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