CROFTS, Freeman Wills

"If we were all as wise as we should be, we would have no stories to tell”

Born in Dublin and trained as a railway engineer, Crofts tried his hand at writing a detective novel during a long period of illness.  The result was The Cask, published in 1920, heralding the return of the professional police detective hero.  In 1924, with Inspector French's Greatest Case, he introduced the detective with whom his name will always be linked – Inspector Joseph French, who uses methodical methods to break down apparently water-tight alibies. Crofts was particularly noted for the scientific exactitude of his methods, the logical procedures of his detectives, and the tightness of his intricate plots.   Dorothy L Sayers called him “our cunningest fitter of jig-saws”, while Raymond Chandler concluded that Crofts was “the soundest builder of them all”.  By 1929 he was successful enough as an author to leave his engineering work and turn entirely to writing his enormously popular detective novels, and becoming a key figure in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.  He continued writing for the rest of his life, his final novel, Anything to Declare, being published just a couple of weeks before his death.

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