Inspector French and Sir John Magill’s Last Journey

Inspector French #6

by Freeman Wills Crofts

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the sixth Inspector French novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, once dubbed ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’.

A MURDER MYSTERY WITHOUT A CLUE

When Sir John Magill, the wealthy Irish industrialist, fails to show up at his home town on a well-publicised visit, neither his family nor the Belfast police can explain his disappearance. Foul play is suspected when his bloodstained hat is discovered, and Scotland Yard is called in. With his characteristic genius for reconstruction, Inspector French evolves a gruesome theory about what happened to the elderly man, but his reputation – and that of Scotland Yard – will depend on finding out who was responsible . . .

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Classics, Detective, British Literature, Golden Age Mystery

321 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Born 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

Reviews

[Jay Maxfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read from the first edition of this book which was published in 1930 for The Collins Crime Club. I will put the book taster from this version at the bottom of this review. As with all the Crofts books that I've read so far (about 12) - it seems he knows how to concoct a good plot and the fluidity of his prose makes for an easy read. He has produced very enjoyable and well thought out novels such as The Box Office Murders & The Hogsback Mystery. However Crofts can get bogged down by his alibi busting and timetables to such an extent that the story becomes verbose and seemly endless - making those kind of novels tedious and boring to read - no matter how good or original the plot mechanism turns out to be. This novel is one of the latter types - at 288 pages (the second longest Collins Crime Club novel ever - the first at 306 pages was another Crofts novel!) it goes in-depth into every single bit of evidence and every thought that passes through Inspector French's mind - very much like a police procedural story only more so! By the middle of the book this reader wondered why Crofts' editor hadn't waded in with a red pencil as the author's writing diarrhoea spew's out endlessly - going over the same points so many times that for once I had to skim read whole chapters - only to find I hadn't really missed out anything vital to the investigation. As with The Cask - Crofts just didn't know when to stop and obviously didn't like to edit his works. Which is why during the 1930s his popularity started to wane. It is such a shame - even though the plot is absolutely convoluted (I suspect many readers will at some point lose the thread as I did - through dis-interest) - had the plot been pruned back and the verbosity removed I am sure that this story would have been a good one. I was very disappointed with this novel and couldn't wait to finish it - not even The Cask turned out to be this disappointing. I would give this novel 3.5 out of 10. Even the book taster writer seemed at a loss in what to say about this novel.
Book Taster.
Sir John Magill, a well known figure in the public life of Ulster, is coming to Ireland via the Stranraer-Larne route. He never reaches his destination. No trace of the missing man can be discovered. What strange fate has befallen Sir John Magill?
Inspector French is called in, and admits that it is his most baffling case. With that admission we feel sure all admirers of Inspector French will agree. And they will follow eagerly the various stages in the unravelling of this, the greatest of Inspector French Mysteries.

[JohnR · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic Crofts plot revolving around times, transport, movements and good old railway and ferry timetables.

If timetables did not exist Crofts would have needed to invent them.

One of Crofts best. If you have read 5 of his books you have probably read all of them. If you like the style you will want to read them all. If you dont like the style then you might not get to 5!

[Victor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superbly gripping mystery with a complex and ingenious puzzle to solve as usual.However,who did it is abundantly clear go the reader about halfway through the book ....But who did what,how and when is the question.Crofts beats all others in constructing a puzzle. There is no chapter end switch of suspicion but you must be very observant to pick up the clues that solves the enigma at the end.

Inspector French tramples down half the grass of Scotland and NI in his bid to connect all the dots and we go along with him.Some may call it boring ,I found it interesting because as a policeman,idle surmise won't cut it ...He has to prove everything beyond reasonable doubt to hang the culprit.
It's a pleasure to go along with French to places where I will probably never go . Crofts is not known for great character building but in this book he has managed to create separate entities by describing personal traits of the people French interviews.There is quite a lot of humorous moments as well.
Solid entertainer ...4.5 stars.

[Sobriquet · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like this one as much as the other 'Inspector French' novels I've read (8 at this point). I think what it was is that the characters weren't developed enough. The focus of solving the crime was very 'how done it'- which is a feature with Wills Crofts's books but I wanted to know more about my characters and have more time with them. Part of the book is set in Ireland and Crofts includes local dialect and Irish locations but although that part was interesting in itself it somehow didn't hold my attention- it lacked tension. I think that the Irish theme and its pleasant representation (he dedicates the book to My many good friends in Northern Ireland ) may have distracted him somewhat.

[Adam Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sir John Magill makes a final journey from London to northern Ireland, and ends up dead and buried. But which side of the sea does the solution to the mystery lie? Inspector French ends up travelling back and forth several times in the hope of finding the murderer(s), with a particular focus on train times, car sightings and boat speeds.

Normally, I enjoy Inspector French's precise, methodical approach to detection. But this novel was more of a struggle. Crofts's desire to dot all the i's meant that the solution got a bit lost in the detail. I did persevere to the end, but it won't be staying on my shelf for a re-read.

[Whistler's Mom · Rating 4 out of 5]

The guy who never disappoints me.

You're either a Crofts fan or you're not. I fell in love with Inspector French (known as "Soapy Joe" to his colleagues for his habit of lulling witnesses and suspects with his folksy personality) when I read "The Loss of the Jane Vosper" and I've never fallen out of love with him.

Call him hum-drum or boring if you like. I suspect his creator would get a chuckle out of the book blurb that describes him as "meticulous and brilliant." He's NOT brilliant, but he's damned sure meticulous. And he never, ever gives up on finding the bad guy. He's exactly the kind of cop I'd want investigating my murder, should I ever be so unfortunate.

This one has the added bonus of involving him with the Belfast police, since Sir John left his home in London to travel to Belfast and disappeared. So was the crime (if any) committed in England or in Northern Ireland? Either way, the Belfast cops are happy to have the famous Scotland Yard investigator to help out. Typically, he makes friends there and is impressed with their intelligence and professionalism.

Sir John was a retired manufactor who turned the running of his Irish linen mills over to his son Malcolm and moved to England with his two daughters. He's a nice enough old gent, but set in his ways and close with his money. This is a grievance for his young relatives, who could use some of their inheritance in advance.

Sir John was an energetic sort who was working on an invention to combine linen and silk into a new fabric. There's a fortune in it for the successful inventor. Sir John's family thinks he was headed to Belfast to meet with a man who'd made progress on a similar invention. Sadly, the old man played his cards close to his vest and neither his children or his secretary know any details. Where to start?

There's no shortage of suspects. Son Malcolm is the prime one, since he inherits the mills, a large sum of money, and the hefty "residual estate." He also has a lifetime income from the bulk of his father's fortune, but if he has no son, it will go to a cousin who does. Sir John was old-fashioned and wanted to leave his money to someone who'd carry on his family name. So far, Malcolm has only daughters.

He recently asked his father for money to keep the mills going during the economic recession and was denied. Sir John believes in the younger generation rowing its own boat. Observers claim the two men were on good terms, but do they know for sure?

The nephew will also receive a sizable chunk of money, with the possibility of more in the future. Unlike his straight-arrow cousin, he's a bit shady. French learns of large gambling debts, which were paid off suddenly. Victor Magill claims his uncle gave him money to pay his debts, but the family says the old man disapproved of his nephew's fast lifestyle and wouldn't support it.

At the time of Sir John's disappearance, Victor was with three friends on a rented boat cruising up the coast of Scotland. Inspector French wonders about the timing of the cruise and also the relationship of the four men. Like Victor Magill, they're heavy gamblers and fond of big-city excitement. Would a boys' boating trip up the coast supply enough to satisfy them?

Sir John's secretary Breene is an Ulsterman who moved to London with Sir John and his daughters. He'll receive an inheritance from his employer's estate, but too small to make him a suspect. Until Victor drops the news that Breene is planning to marry one of Sir John's middle-aged daughters. That marriage (and the transfer of Miss Magill's generous dowry) would undoubtably be blocked until the stern father's death. Love and money (separately or together) can be a powerful motive and Breene is an ambitious man.

French investigates in London and Sergeant M'Clung does the same in Belfast. When the body is found, things look bad for Malcolm, but not bad enough to indict him. French has a feeling the evidence may be a bit TOO good. Was the letter which led to the discovery of the body written by a public-spirited citizen or by someone who wanted to point the police toward Malcolm as the murderer?

Crofts was an engineer and his books reflect it. French forms theories based on his opinions of the suspects and the possibility of them committing the crime, but he can't take theories to a jury. Every supposition has to be checked against train time-tables and boat speeds and distances between various points. Witnesses must be found, even in the most isolated areas.

It's the slog of real police work, which seldom resembles the fast-paced, danger-filled stories we see in movies and on television. Personally, I enjoy following along as the investigators work together, assess information, form theories, and (sometimes) hit dead-ends and have to start over again. Only a lousy cop massages the evidence to show what he wants it to show. Inspector French is an honest professional.

I suspect Crofts put a lot of himself into Inspector French, a thoroughly likable man. He's flexible, pleasant to work with, and always happy to learn from others. I think his collaboration with Sergeant M'Clurg is totally satisfying. In the end, they not only identify the murderers, but collect enough evidence to take them to court and get convictions. They had the advantage of knowing that justice was swift and public sympathy would be with the victim, not the murderer. I wish we could say the same today.

PS Wonder what Agatha Christie had to say to her fellow-Detection Club member about French's sly jab at Poirot? At least Crofts knew he was Belgian, NOT French!

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decidedly not one of the better Inspector French investigations.

Although not as long or dull as "The Cask", this did have unnecessary repetition and a lengthy reconstruction which added little. Although French kept saying he had proof, what the case rested on was a huge amount of circumstantial evidence and, ultimately, the case was solved by a trick.

The plot was fairly easy to fathom, without all the minutiae of journey times and was not particularly interesting.

[Cybercrone · Rating 1 out of 5]

Again, there was no listing for the e-pub book.
This book was really bad. The plot meandered on forever with false twists and turns. The worst thing was the pages and pages of map reading and taking sea miles and knots and figuring out where a boat might be at a certain time. I thought it would never end.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Inspector French, for all his foibles, and this one didn't disappoint.

[Barbara Luiselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t like the story. The alibi was too complex. I’m a little disappointed.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/inspector-french-and-sir-john-magills-last-journey-by-freeman-wills-crofts/

One of the very few novels with a Northern Ireland setting between 1921 and 1968 (see also: Odd Man Out, and er I think that’s it from my own reading in the last twenty-five years or so), this is a murder mystery published and set in 1930, in which an Ulster industrialist disappears on his way home after a long absence, and is soon found murdered. The Norn Iron bits are pretty much restricted to the East Antrim coast, though there are some nice bits of local colour, and there is also much exploration of the Scottish train line to Stranraer and the northwest English and southwest Scottish coasts.

The solution depends rather on an improbable set of motivations for the killing, and also an equally improbably carefully calculated set of timings for journeys by train, car and boat, to the point that the suspension of my disbelief became a bit eroded. But this was the high period of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, and I guess it was what the market expected of a detective story. (There is even a reference to Hercule Poirot in the novel.)

I had read elsewhere that this book rather whitewashed the new-ish devolved Northern Ireland government, given the author’s Ulster Protestant background. (Stormont itself was still being built in 1930.) I did not find this charge firmly substantiated. True, there’s no reflection at all about the sectarian basis of the statelet; but as I said earlier, the Norn Iron settings are mostly along the coast Carrickfergus and Ballygalley Head, with a couple of excursions to Cave Hill and into central Belfast, and one to Bangor, which doesn’t really take you into contested territory. (The victim is reportedly seen on Sandy Row, which is described as ‘more or less working class’.)

On the other hand, I got a sense that the author felt the smallness of the interlocking circles of government and industry in the province could be a problem rather than a solution. And as for Dublin,

"He [Inspector French] had not been over since the troubles [ie 1920-22] and he was impressed by the air of smartness and prosperity which the city wore. It seemed cleaner than before and the new buildings made O’Connell Street a really imposing thoroughfare."

Not exactly the sentiments of a raving Unionist!

The plot of the book has a couple of eerie similarities with the real-life murder of Patricia Curran twenty-two years later, the victim being from a prominent local family, the body found in the grounds of their East Antrim home, and a close relative suspected of the crime. The differences are fairly significant too of course, and I suspect it’s unlikely that the 1952 murderer, whoever that was, took any inspiration from Crofts.

Anyway, as I said, the book is of interest for the period colour, if not completely satisfactory as a murder mystery.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crofts always writes a clever, twisty plot, and French is a solid toiler with flashes of brilliance who has just enough personality to qualify as a character, rather than the crime-solving plot device he was in the first couple of books. Mrs French is mentioned a couple of times in this book, but never appears.

At the 13% mark, I already had a theory about who had committed the crime and how. That theory proved to be correct as far as it went, though very incomplete, and I didn't know why they'd committed it. Watching French unravel the complicated plot in his dogged way was mostly enjoyable, though occasionally I felt some of the tedium that he himself was feeling. Mostly, the author skips over the tedious police-procedure parts with summary, and only gives us fully developed scenes when French's perseverance (or a credible stroke of luck favouring the prepared mind) yields progress. As always, the sense of place is well conveyed, particularly since many of the scenes are in Northern Ireland, which is where the author grew up. And, as is the tradition with the French books, there's a tense scene at the end when French and his colleagues make the arrest and are vigorously resisted.

The HarperCollins edition is a typical low-effort production that's been run through scanning and OCR and then pushed out without adequate (or, perhaps, any) proofreading for scan errors. There are multiple missing, inserted, misplaced or substituted punctuation marks, and a couple of typos that, if someone had bothered to run a spell check, would have been caught. I read the ebook from my library, but I assume the paperback is just as bad. If you have the option, don't buy this edition; it will only encourage the publisher in their lack of professionalism, plus it's annoying to read.

[Pamela Mclaren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspector French of Scotland Yard is brought into the investigation into the disappearance of Sir John Magill, a wealthy linen manufacturer. The elder businessman has been traveling to Ireland and the Belfast police have tracked his steps since he crossed the border, but just what happened to him is a mystery.

French checks Magill's movements from his estate in England, as well as those who came into contact him any where along his journey, but everything seems to be without suspicion, including the alibis of his son, Major Malcolm Magill, who oversaw is father's business interests, and nephew Victor Magill.

Then Sir John's body is found.

Slowly and surely, French digs deeper and finds out things that create questions about both men. Are they working together — or is one throwing the other under the bus?

Published originally in 1930, this was one of six Inspector French novels. And like other books by Freeman Wills Crofts, this is very much a police procedural, very detailed with several characters and action in various locations. The writing is clear and concise, the characters and dialogue believable. The only criticism, if it is such, is that this is a very complicated mystery. Fun to read but a little unbelievable.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating between 3 & 3.5

An entry in the Inspector French series that seemed all plot and no characters for me at least.
As with other FWC novels I have read, the whole story is centered around the HOW + WHO which is okay in a short novel but this time was too long I felt. The police procedural parts felt repetitive to me, and as explained many times by FWC (and other procedural crime novel writers at this time) police work is generally slow, plodding and repetitive but it shouldn't be for the reader.
This novel I feel highlighted the main issues with FWC books, the mechanics of the crime are very well thought out but he was never really able to populate the books with interesting and realistic characters.

Overall an okay read I thought, but due to his style i don't think it would be popular with readers who generally go for more modern authors.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: Sir John Magill of Ulster sets out to visit Ireland by train but never makes it. Inspector French thinks it is his most baffling case.

[Sara Aye Moung · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classic crime fiction. Intricate murder puzzle solved by Inspector French

[Jeff Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the great joys is listening to Phil Fox audio narration of the novels of Freeman Wills Croft. His pitch and tone bring the books alive and this book is made greater by his prescence.

[Lilly B · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy inspector French novels even though detective lit isnt something i’ve ever really read - I defo want to read more of both the genre and also FWC

[Calum Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

B:

Meticulous in construction but long and pretty dry. French is asked near the end why anyone would go to such complex lengths to commit a crime and he defends his theory.

No. No they wouldn't.

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

A self-serving detective with a higher opinion of his brilliance than we are afforded any evidence of, a far-fetched plot that serves the writer's needs rather more than the reader's and more repetition than in a fugue without the same sense of progression. Nonetheless I enjoyed the jaunt up and down the Cumberland coast (not too many books with a chapter based in Barrow), across the Solway Firth, in and out of Dumfries and Galloway and across the sea to Larne. Freeman Wills Crofts was at one time regarded as being on a par with Dorothy L Sayers, Josephine Tey and Agatha Christie. There are signs of a revival of interest.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

You don't usually read Freeman Wills Crofts for the thrills, but this one is even slower paced than most, as Inspector French travels from London to Belfast and back, with detours into Scotland, Plymouth, and other places, often admiring the scenery. Scotland Yard is called in by the Northern Ireland police when retired industrialist Sir John Magill disappears after traveling from his home in London to his son's house outside of Belfast. First, French must find out what happened to the elderly man, and then who is responsible. As is so often the case with Crofts, the how is as much a question as the who.

[Neer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first Wills Crofts book read by me. Popular in its days, it has Inspector French investigating the disappearance of Sir John Macgill who started from London to his home-town in Northern Ireland.

Full review here:

http://inkquilletc.blogspot.in/2012/0...