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Inspector French #20
Golden Ashes
The new Sir Geoffrey Buller is working in an office when he unexpectedly inherits the title and Forde Manor with its collection of priceless art. Widow, Betty Stanton, takes the post of housekeeper and is surprised when she finds Sir Geoffrey is having paintings cleaned. The house is empty and Sir Geoffrey in Italy when disaster strikes. Inspector French reconstructs the cunning and complex crime from a mosaic of detail.
- GenresMystery
Paperback
First published January 1, 1940
4 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
Freeman Wills Crofts
141 books89 followersBorn in Dublin of English stock, Freeman Wills Crofts was educated at Methodist and Campbell Colleges in Belfast and at age 17 he became a civil engineering pupil, apprenticed to his uncle, Berkeley D Wise who was the chief engineer of the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway (BNCR).
In 1899 he became a fully fledged railway engineer before becoming a district engineer and then chief assistant engineer for the BNCR.
He married in 1912, Mary Bellas Canning, a bank manager's daughter. His writing career began when he was recovering from a serious illness and his efforts were rewarded when his first novel 'The Cask' was accepted for publication by a London publishing house. Within two decades the book had sold 100,000 copies. Thereafter he continued to write in his spare time and produced a book a year through to 1929 when he was obliged to stop working through poor health.
When he and his wife moved to Guildford, England, he took up writing full time and not surprisingly many of his plots revolved around travel and transport, particularly transport timetables and many of them had a Guildford setting.
In retirement from engineering, as well as writing, he also pursued his other interests, music, in which he was an organist and conductor, gardening, carpentry and travel.
He wrote a mystery novel almost every year until his death and in addition he produced about 50 short stories, 30 radio plays for the BBC, a number of true crime works, a play, 'Sudden Death', a juvenile mystery, 'Young Robin Brand, Detective', and a religious work, 'The Four Gospels in One Story'.
His best known character is Inspector Joseph French, who featured in 30 detective novels between 1924 and 1957. And Raymond Chandler praised his plots, calling him "the soundest builder of them all".
Gerry Wolstenholme
May 2010
In 1899 he became a fully fledged railway engineer before becoming a district engineer and then chief assistant engineer for the BNCR.
He married in 1912, Mary Bellas Canning, a bank manager's daughter. His writing career began when he was recovering from a serious illness and his efforts were rewarded when his first novel 'The Cask' was accepted for publication by a London publishing house. Within two decades the book had sold 100,000 copies. Thereafter he continued to write in his spare time and produced a book a year through to 1929 when he was obliged to stop working through poor health.
When he and his wife moved to Guildford, England, he took up writing full time and not surprisingly many of his plots revolved around travel and transport, particularly transport timetables and many of them had a Guildford setting.
In retirement from engineering, as well as writing, he also pursued his other interests, music, in which he was an organist and conductor, gardening, carpentry and travel.
He wrote a mystery novel almost every year until his death and in addition he produced about 50 short stories, 30 radio plays for the BBC, a number of true crime works, a play, 'Sudden Death', a juvenile mystery, 'Young Robin Brand, Detective', and a religious work, 'The Four Gospels in One Story'.
His best known character is Inspector Joseph French, who featured in 30 detective novels between 1924 and 1957. And Raymond Chandler praised his plots, calling him "the soundest builder of them all".
Gerry Wolstenholme
May 2010
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 12, 2019
Not bad, but far from his best. Full review at classicmystery.blog
October 29, 2022
This 20th outing for Inspector French, originally published in 1940, is that strange beast, a very readable novel with a plot which is ditchwater-dull.
Fans of French, and I am one, are used to a scenario in which the criminals are easy to spot but the plot is difficult to fathom, and, therefore, much of the interest is in watching as the Inspector spins theories which he builds up or knocks down as he pieces the evidence together to make his case.
Here, apart from the mechanics of the arson, and some slight detail of the murder, the whole affair is so blindingly obvious that the reader cries out to be wrong-footed and misled, but cries in vain.
There are so many missed opportunities, especially with characters who are undeveloped or underused. For example, Crofts spends a great deal of time initially on establishing Betty Stanton, who thereafter plays little real part. Artists, art restoration and valuation are important to the plot but are dealt with only lightly. I also find it odd that a novel set in the early part of 1939 has no indications of the approach of war, despite the numerous trips to France.
A plodding mystery, lifted by the ease of the writing.
3.5 stars.
Fans of French, and I am one, are used to a scenario in which the criminals are easy to spot but the plot is difficult to fathom, and, therefore, much of the interest is in watching as the Inspector spins theories which he builds up or knocks down as he pieces the evidence together to make his case.
Here, apart from the mechanics of the arson, and some slight detail of the murder, the whole affair is so blindingly obvious that the reader cries out to be wrong-footed and misled, but cries in vain.
There are so many missed opportunities, especially with characters who are undeveloped or underused. For example, Crofts spends a great deal of time initially on establishing Betty Stanton, who thereafter plays little real part. Artists, art restoration and valuation are important to the plot but are dealt with only lightly. I also find it odd that a novel set in the early part of 1939 has no indications of the approach of war, despite the numerous trips to France.
A plodding mystery, lifted by the ease of the writing.
3.5 stars.
October 26, 2020
It’s not really a mystery, more like a math problem. But pretty satisfying none the less. The solution is unbelievably (literally) complex, but all the clues are there if you want a go at working it out for yourself.
November 22, 2023
I don't think this is a particularly great entry in the series.
Let's just say that it becomes progressively clearer - in the opening 100 pages of the book - that what we most likely have here is a Nefarious Scheme cooked up by Someone Greedy. Okay. And also, a bit further on, we have a disappearance of he who was a pretty nice guy- shame to watch him dissolve off the face of the Earth (murdered?) - and we have to wonder if the disappearance of the nice chap is related to the Nefarious Scheme, if there is a Nefarious Scheme. But I'll chat about the disappearance angle a little later.
Right, so by page 136, Inspector French has entered the book, now that there's a distinctly dubious conflagration to investigate...and French, as of page 136 - and actually pretty fresh to the book - comes up with a solution to the apparent "crime"...meaning he, like me, felt certain Someone Greedy had pulled a Nefarious Scheme, and this needed to be proved, and the correct Greedy Someone hauled in and charged. Hunh.
I don't want to Spoil things, let's just say that things seem very Obvious, in this would-be Mystery. Now I'm not going to say whether both Inspector French/Great Detective, and myself, Dense Reader, found everything incredibly obvious and transparent for the longest time - the bulk of the book - and then suddenly later some big Twist twisted both of our knickers. And I won't say whether or not some very Obvious underpinnings of the whole affair were revealed, in the end, to be exactly as they had seemed, no surprise...
But I will say that it is this aspect of the book that was disappointing. So you can take it that if there was a Twist connected to what seemed obvious, I was underwhelmed; if there was no twist, and much is easy to figure out, then I was underwhelmed. Add to that the fact that, as Nefarious Schemes That Feed Greed Go, this one seemed to have a lot of concrete, residual evidence splashed about that it wouldn't take a genius to notice - I would know - or, for that matter, cops and insurance agents to spot among the wreckage. I'll leave that alone, but there you go.
The disappearance portion of the novel, which we wait to see blossom into murder - or perhaps not - is the more satisfying Mystery aspect of this weird combination of "Inverted Mystery" and traditional whodunit. But even here, you need to be delighted by the author's usual bag of travel-time/alibi/photo-shown-to-witnesses tricks. Nevertheless, the solution to Mr. Nice Guy's vanishing act, and whether it links to the Swiss-cheese-esque, back-to-the-drawing-board Nefarious Scheme, is better at doing the twist. In a book where I was pretty sure I had everything sorted, I was in for some bamboozling, after all.
This is 20 years after Freeman Wills Crofts's first, much more creative book, The Cask. I know at least one critic, in something I read, stated that both the demanding Mystery-reading public, and Crofts himself, were tiring of the same old Golden Age formula, the Psychological Crime Novel was making its breakthrough, etc. Crofts started experimenting, doing the Inverted thing (with much success, IMO; take heed, Columbo fans!), trying to freshen the process up even for his own satisfaction. I would say Golden Ashes, though entertaining, is a disappointing variant.
Let's just say that it becomes progressively clearer - in the opening 100 pages of the book - that what we most likely have here is a Nefarious Scheme cooked up by Someone Greedy. Okay. And also, a bit further on, we have a disappearance of he who was a pretty nice guy- shame to watch him dissolve off the face of the Earth (murdered?) - and we have to wonder if the disappearance of the nice chap is related to the Nefarious Scheme, if there is a Nefarious Scheme. But I'll chat about the disappearance angle a little later.
Right, so by page 136, Inspector French has entered the book, now that there's a distinctly dubious conflagration to investigate...and French, as of page 136 - and actually pretty fresh to the book - comes up with a solution to the apparent "crime"...meaning he, like me, felt certain Someone Greedy had pulled a Nefarious Scheme, and this needed to be proved, and the correct Greedy Someone hauled in and charged. Hunh.
I don't want to Spoil things, let's just say that things seem very Obvious, in this would-be Mystery. Now I'm not going to say whether both Inspector French/Great Detective, and myself, Dense Reader, found everything incredibly obvious and transparent for the longest time - the bulk of the book - and then suddenly later some big Twist twisted both of our knickers. And I won't say whether or not some very Obvious underpinnings of the whole affair were revealed, in the end, to be exactly as they had seemed, no surprise...
But I will say that it is this aspect of the book that was disappointing. So you can take it that if there was a Twist connected to what seemed obvious, I was underwhelmed; if there was no twist, and much is easy to figure out, then I was underwhelmed. Add to that the fact that, as Nefarious Schemes That Feed Greed Go, this one seemed to have a lot of concrete, residual evidence splashed about that it wouldn't take a genius to notice - I would know - or, for that matter, cops and insurance agents to spot among the wreckage. I'll leave that alone, but there you go.
The disappearance portion of the novel, which we wait to see blossom into murder - or perhaps not - is the more satisfying Mystery aspect of this weird combination of "Inverted Mystery" and traditional whodunit. But even here, you need to be delighted by the author's usual bag of travel-time/alibi/photo-shown-to-witnesses tricks. Nevertheless, the solution to Mr. Nice Guy's vanishing act, and whether it links to the Swiss-cheese-esque, back-to-the-drawing-board Nefarious Scheme, is better at doing the twist. In a book where I was pretty sure I had everything sorted, I was in for some bamboozling, after all.
This is 20 years after Freeman Wills Crofts's first, much more creative book, The Cask. I know at least one critic, in something I read, stated that both the demanding Mystery-reading public, and Crofts himself, were tiring of the same old Golden Age formula, the Psychological Crime Novel was making its breakthrough, etc. Crofts started experimenting, doing the Inverted thing (with much success, IMO; take heed, Columbo fans!), trying to freshen the process up even for his own satisfaction. I would say Golden Ashes, though entertaining, is a disappointing variant.
May 11, 2024
Not of the first rung but still a very readable one ...so much so that I finished it in 2 seatings and within a few hours in the same day. Who is not the question here ... what and how is . Many well known reviewers seems to have gotten bored after solving the Who...no credits there at all . The book is not boring ...and the how of the alibis are as clever as expected from Crofts .
November 6, 2022
Excellent Inspector French mystery
Another intriguing we of mystery by Freeman Wiils Crofts. These stories, like those of John Rhode (Dr Priestley series) from the golden age of detective stories are great. Pity that more of the John Rhode/ Cecil Street books are not available electronically.
Another intriguing we of mystery by Freeman Wiils Crofts. These stories, like those of John Rhode (Dr Priestley series) from the golden age of detective stories are great. Pity that more of the John Rhode/ Cecil Street books are not available electronically.
June 28, 2018
Good police procedural, with engaging characters.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews