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The Cask
Paris. Shipping business, police techniques, investigative procedures, feature in this alibi puzzle plot.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1920
139 people are currently reading
662 people want to read
About the author
Freeman Wills Crofts
138 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 - 30 of 120 reviews
August 6, 2015
Freeman Wills Crofts (1879-1957) was one of the most successful of the crime writers from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, writing a book almost every year during his writing career. He was a member of the Detection Club, alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers and became a full time writer in 1929. The Cask was his first ever novel, written in 1920 when he found himself off work with a long illness. Although it was written a long time ago (even for a Golden Age novel, it is one of the earliest I have come across), it has aged well. Yes, it is dated in that people use horses and carts far more often than a car and phone calls are still novel enough to be easily traced, but it is the human emotions that matter and this novel deals with the classic themes of jealousy and revenge.
The Cask takes place in both London and Paris. When a cask arrives in London from Paris it causes suspicion. Supposed to hold a statue, gold rolls out when it is opened slightly and there is a glimpse of a hand. What follows is the disappearance of the cask, tracking it down and then trying to decide where it came from and who is to blame for the body inside. Inspector Burnley is the English detective sent in search of the truth, working in Paris alongside Lefarge. Both the detectives are intelligent, hard working and follow up the clues thoroughly. There is also George La Touche, a private detective, who almost loses his life in his attempt to discover what happened. This is very much a puzzle - with clues that are confusing but which can be followed (personally I gave up and simply enjoyed the story, but I am sure you could solve it if you made notes!). It is interesting to read this very early example of the genre and it is easy to see why Crofts is revered by those who enjoy books from this era.
The Cask takes place in both London and Paris. When a cask arrives in London from Paris it causes suspicion. Supposed to hold a statue, gold rolls out when it is opened slightly and there is a glimpse of a hand. What follows is the disappearance of the cask, tracking it down and then trying to decide where it came from and who is to blame for the body inside. Inspector Burnley is the English detective sent in search of the truth, working in Paris alongside Lefarge. Both the detectives are intelligent, hard working and follow up the clues thoroughly. There is also George La Touche, a private detective, who almost loses his life in his attempt to discover what happened. This is very much a puzzle - with clues that are confusing but which can be followed (personally I gave up and simply enjoyed the story, but I am sure you could solve it if you made notes!). It is interesting to read this very early example of the genre and it is easy to see why Crofts is revered by those who enjoy books from this era.
April 26, 2025
The Cask is a murder mystery from 1920 and a lot of it was incredibly tedious to read. We get every tiny piece of the investigation, including things like measuring the distance between ladder marks, told in minute detail, and then often repeated multiple times. The over-explaining is a LOT and it comes across as if the reader is unable to make any leaps in logic. Meanwhile, the characters sometimes do things that make no sense- like when someone tells you the name of this dead woman, why do you then spend chapters searching for all the missing women in the city instead of asking him questions about who she is and how he knows her? Makes zero sense. The misogyny is also a lot. Like how the "female detectives" are only tasked with finding out where the victim bought her clothes and they can't even do that competently. Not even getting into the implications of how and why this woman died and the fairly graphic description of her strangulation. And the villain monologue. Ugh, not a fan.
July 29, 2023
This style of golden age mystery that's so focused on puzzle mystery is not my favorite, but I really liked the tone and writing a lot. For 1921, it's extremely readable and fun, so I would definitely read more from this author
June 18, 2021
Enough to drive a girl to drink…
As a cargo ship is unloading at the docks in London, an accident causes a cask to fall and split. Two employees of the shipping company spot that some gold coins have fallen from it so not unnaturally they decide to have a little poke around inside to see if there are more. There are, but more shockingly there is also a dead hand which appears to be attached to a dead woman! So begins this ridiculously over-complicated, utterly tedious investigation into the death of someone I didn’t care about at the hands of one of the tiny group of suspects about whom I cared even less. If only the cask had been full of red wine, I could have got paralytically drunk and been happy…
Dear me, that’s the nearest I’ve come to death by boredom in a while! I’ve read a few of Crofts’ extremely procedural procedurals now, with varying degrees of enthusiasm or lack thereof, but this one is in a class of its own. Pages and pages and pages of shipping routes of casks, three detectives going over and over and over the same pieces of evidence again and again and again, zero characterisation of victims, suspects or detectives – truly it is a mystery to me how anyone manages to make it all the way through to the end of this with their sanity intact. I gave up at 53% when it became clear to me that I would soon be screaming out loud rather than just inside my head. I was “interested” enough to flick to the last chapter to find out which of the suspects had done the deed, and when I got there I realised I’d been right along – I really didn’t care!
And since I’m moaning, let me have a brief rant about the dialogue. People do not speak as if they are a business letter. No one – NO ONE – ever – in the history of the universe – has ever said in conversation, and I quote:
“That cask, as you see, was invoiced out via Havre and Southampton on the 30th ultimo, and yet it turned up in London on Monday, the 5th instant,…”
Good grief! And then there’s the convoluted journey of the corpse-containing cask, which turns up in Paris, London, Southampton, Le Havre and Rouen, some of them several times. Why? WHY?? Why would a murderer go to these ridiculous lengths to get rid of a body? What’s wrong with burying it in the woods or, since it crosses the Channel at least three times as far as I could gather, dumping it in the sea? And I don’t wish to lower the tone, but would a corpse travelling about in a cask for days in the height of summer remain… ahem… fresh??
(I realise the answers to the above may be given in the 47% of the book I didn’t read, but despite my mouth-frothing ranting, I DON’T CARE!!)
This was apparently Crofts’ first book, so a very strong argument against reading books in order. He undoubtedly did improve, even if his later books occasionally also bore me into fits of the screaming abdabs. At least he got over the desire to make his characters talk as if they were dictating letters to their secretaries. Apparently writer and critic Julian Symons classed him as one of “the humdrum school” of mystery novelists – on the basis of this one I feel Symons was being too kind. But Martin Edwards is even kinder when he uses the euphemism “meticulous” to describe the endless mind-numbing tediosity of repeated details. Amazingly the book has sold over 100,000 copies. I downloaded my copy free and yet still feel I’ve been overcharged…
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
As a cargo ship is unloading at the docks in London, an accident causes a cask to fall and split. Two employees of the shipping company spot that some gold coins have fallen from it so not unnaturally they decide to have a little poke around inside to see if there are more. There are, but more shockingly there is also a dead hand which appears to be attached to a dead woman! So begins this ridiculously over-complicated, utterly tedious investigation into the death of someone I didn’t care about at the hands of one of the tiny group of suspects about whom I cared even less. If only the cask had been full of red wine, I could have got paralytically drunk and been happy…
Dear me, that’s the nearest I’ve come to death by boredom in a while! I’ve read a few of Crofts’ extremely procedural procedurals now, with varying degrees of enthusiasm or lack thereof, but this one is in a class of its own. Pages and pages and pages of shipping routes of casks, three detectives going over and over and over the same pieces of evidence again and again and again, zero characterisation of victims, suspects or detectives – truly it is a mystery to me how anyone manages to make it all the way through to the end of this with their sanity intact. I gave up at 53% when it became clear to me that I would soon be screaming out loud rather than just inside my head. I was “interested” enough to flick to the last chapter to find out which of the suspects had done the deed, and when I got there I realised I’d been right along – I really didn’t care!
And since I’m moaning, let me have a brief rant about the dialogue. People do not speak as if they are a business letter. No one – NO ONE – ever – in the history of the universe – has ever said in conversation, and I quote:
“That cask, as you see, was invoiced out via Havre and Southampton on the 30th ultimo, and yet it turned up in London on Monday, the 5th instant,…”
Good grief! And then there’s the convoluted journey of the corpse-containing cask, which turns up in Paris, London, Southampton, Le Havre and Rouen, some of them several times. Why? WHY?? Why would a murderer go to these ridiculous lengths to get rid of a body? What’s wrong with burying it in the woods or, since it crosses the Channel at least three times as far as I could gather, dumping it in the sea? And I don’t wish to lower the tone, but would a corpse travelling about in a cask for days in the height of summer remain… ahem… fresh??
(I realise the answers to the above may be given in the 47% of the book I didn’t read, but despite my mouth-frothing ranting, I DON’T CARE!!)
This was apparently Crofts’ first book, so a very strong argument against reading books in order. He undoubtedly did improve, even if his later books occasionally also bore me into fits of the screaming abdabs. At least he got over the desire to make his characters talk as if they were dictating letters to their secretaries. Apparently writer and critic Julian Symons classed him as one of “the humdrum school” of mystery novelists – on the basis of this one I feel Symons was being too kind. But Martin Edwards is even kinder when he uses the euphemism “meticulous” to describe the endless mind-numbing tediosity of repeated details. Amazingly the book has sold over 100,000 copies. I downloaded my copy free and yet still feel I’ve been overcharged…
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
October 8, 2023
This was Crofts debut. He had been recuperating for some time from an illness but was well enough to feel bored. For something to do he put pen to paper. Few of us would have such good results!
A large shipment of wine in casks had arrived by ship in London. One cask was different than the others and unbalanced the group of four being offloaded. It was set aside. The clerk from the shipping company sent to make sure the wine shipment arrived in good order noticed that some sawdust was being spilled from the cask that was different. A sovereign fell out and then another. Something was definitely amiss. Further inspection showed a woman's hand inside the cask and there was a man on scene to claim the cask.
Well, it was time to notify Scotland Yard. The tale becomes tangled, but also heavy on police detail. I think some might not like the level of detail in this police procedural. I just wanted to know where the story would go.
I have read one other by Crofts and I don't remember that he included so much detail, but maybe my memory isn't as sharp as I once prided myself as having. I do remember that the plot was very good as it is in this novel. I also like the writing style and am happy to realize I have some others waiting my attention. I enjoyed this and, though I'm giving it 4-stars, I think it just barely slips across the 3/4-star line.
A large shipment of wine in casks had arrived by ship in London. One cask was different than the others and unbalanced the group of four being offloaded. It was set aside. The clerk from the shipping company sent to make sure the wine shipment arrived in good order noticed that some sawdust was being spilled from the cask that was different. A sovereign fell out and then another. Something was definitely amiss. Further inspection showed a woman's hand inside the cask and there was a man on scene to claim the cask.
Well, it was time to notify Scotland Yard. The tale becomes tangled, but also heavy on police detail. I think some might not like the level of detail in this police procedural. I just wanted to know where the story would go.
I have read one other by Crofts and I don't remember that he included so much detail, but maybe my memory isn't as sharp as I once prided myself as having. I do remember that the plot was very good as it is in this novel. I also like the writing style and am happy to realize I have some others waiting my attention. I enjoyed this and, though I'm giving it 4-stars, I think it just barely slips across the 3/4-star line.
June 5, 2020
This was the author’s first mystery, and the book is too long and repetitive. However, the plotting is carefully done, and I enjoyed how the British detective and his French policeman friend fit in some Paris sightseeing and fine dining along with their detecting.
February 4, 2021
My preference for Agatha Christie’s novels introduced me to yet another author belonging to the golden age of detective fiction ie Freeman Wills Crofts.
The Cask, his first novel, is an intriguing ride filled to the brim with suspense that restrains the readers from shelving the book at all.
His style of storytelling is unlike any other detective fiction writer.
This book in particular has a lot of investigators and though it changes protagonists every once in a while, it does not dilute the pace storytelling.
The writer does an amazing job of introducing successive protagonists in a few lines every time so as not to break the momentum of the tale. Each investigator utilizes a different technique to reach conclusions.
Along the way, the book introduces a mastermind villain to the reader who is always a step ahead of the law.
Most of tale focuses on breaking the alibis of suspects in the case and in a stunning manner, Crofts managed to weave together a tale full of twists and turns.
The case becomes known within a few initial paragraphs as it kicks off from initial sentences however the actual investigation kicks off after a few chapters.
The simple yet intriguing plot coupled with back and forth change in setting from London to Paris presents a gripping story to the reader.
The novel is split into three parts. While the first part reads more like a cozy mystery, the second and final parts fuel the suspense.
However, the book also has a few downsides.
A large number of protagonists are present in the novel and all seem to share the same investigation acumen. Due to this, for most part of the novel, it feels like a single protagonist making inquiries using different names.
Moreover, some chapters add nothing to the development of the story and make the novel feel like a drag.
Finally, the first few chapters are extremely slow-paced and the actual mystery doesn’t kick in till the start of chapter 9.
Nevertheless I would recommend this book to every mystery enthusiast.
The Cask, his first novel, is an intriguing ride filled to the brim with suspense that restrains the readers from shelving the book at all.
His style of storytelling is unlike any other detective fiction writer.
This book in particular has a lot of investigators and though it changes protagonists every once in a while, it does not dilute the pace storytelling.
The writer does an amazing job of introducing successive protagonists in a few lines every time so as not to break the momentum of the tale. Each investigator utilizes a different technique to reach conclusions.
Along the way, the book introduces a mastermind villain to the reader who is always a step ahead of the law.
Most of tale focuses on breaking the alibis of suspects in the case and in a stunning manner, Crofts managed to weave together a tale full of twists and turns.
The case becomes known within a few initial paragraphs as it kicks off from initial sentences however the actual investigation kicks off after a few chapters.
The simple yet intriguing plot coupled with back and forth change in setting from London to Paris presents a gripping story to the reader.
The novel is split into three parts. While the first part reads more like a cozy mystery, the second and final parts fuel the suspense.
However, the book also has a few downsides.
A large number of protagonists are present in the novel and all seem to share the same investigation acumen. Due to this, for most part of the novel, it feels like a single protagonist making inquiries using different names.
Moreover, some chapters add nothing to the development of the story and make the novel feel like a drag.
Finally, the first few chapters are extremely slow-paced and the actual mystery doesn’t kick in till the start of chapter 9.
Nevertheless I would recommend this book to every mystery enthusiast.
December 17, 2015
I thought this was a very competent detective novel. If I had put on my anorak and hunted out contemporary train timetables and street maps the chronology and geography would have been faultless. The two detectives are painstaking in their investigation, then stop when they are satisfied that they have the culprit and sufficient evidence for a conviction. The private detective also investigates to give the accused the best chance of a defence in court. Everybody does their job.
The only problem with the book is that I didn't particularly care about any of the characters. We know what they do, what they wear and look like, what they eat and how they spend their spare time, but very little about what they think and feel. The author's preoccupation is with the plot and creating a puzzle for us to solve, which he does well. I don't think I would want to read more of them though.
This is an early example of a very popular genre and later writers improved on it. I think some reminders or recaps are helpful, but to have a new detective re-investigate the whole thing was a bit more repetition than I wanted. It is plausible and well reasoned and he does show how tiny overlooked clues can make all the difference.
The only problem with the book is that I didn't particularly care about any of the characters. We know what they do, what they wear and look like, what they eat and how they spend their spare time, but very little about what they think and feel. The author's preoccupation is with the plot and creating a puzzle for us to solve, which he does well. I don't think I would want to read more of them though.
This is an early example of a very popular genre and later writers improved on it. I think some reminders or recaps are helpful, but to have a new detective re-investigate the whole thing was a bit more repetition than I wanted. It is plausible and well reasoned and he does show how tiny overlooked clues can make all the difference.
March 14, 2011
Charmingly tedious mystery goes in for every Golden Age cliche. The sheer amount of deduction is altogether impressive, but the book is weighed down by the fact that it is mostly very uninteresting. This is my first Crofts, and apparently his trademark is the laboriously described railway timetable. No character is more than sketched. There is constant exposition, but none of it pertains to psychology in the least. A quite silly book by any measure, which could do with a hundred pages less, and yet there are things in it which I quite enjoyed. It is nearly a procedural, and the central mystery is unusually ingenious.
Read
February 24, 2019This is an early police procedural, taken to the nth degree of following the evidence. Although it had its interesting points, it's so exhaustive that eventually I became an exhausted reader and skimmed the latter parts (even though they were probably the more interesting).
January 12, 2020
The Cask (another one of this author's books that I've never heard of) is a novel written by Freeman Wills Crofts (again who I never heard of before I read one or two of his other novels) was published in 1920. It was his first novel which I only realized when I was finished, so I'm obviously not going to read all his novels in the order he wrote them. I think it would be impossible anyway, if you can find all his books you deserve an award, a few books perhaps. I read this book because I enjoyed the last one, and I was in a used bookstore and there it was. So if you go to used book stores where the books are really, really used, and dusty and smell funny, you may find this book. I know that the next time I find myself at that bookstore, a place I like going to because I can find books no one ever reads there, not for the cleanliness of the building,. And if I come across another Freeman Wills Crofts book I will buy it. As long as all the pages are there and none of the dozen or so cats that live there hasn't used it as a litter box that is. (The owner also has a cat rescue home there, you can come in and take one of the without a home cats from them, a wonderful thing to do, but a little strange having them running around in a book store.)
Anyway, back to our author, way back in 1912 Crofts found himself working as a Junior Assistant to his uncle who was the chief engineer of the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway. He also got married about the same time, to the daughter of a bank manager, Mary Bellas Canning. (That's her name not the bank manager's) What he wanted to do was write, so in 1929 he abandoned his railway engineering career to become a full-time writer. I wonder what his wife thought of that. He had written his first book "The Cask" in 1920 and once he got started he didn't stop, producing a book almost every year for thirty years. He is best remembered (not by anyone I know) for his detective, Inspector Joseph French, who was introduced in his fifth book "Inspector French's Greatest Case" in 1924, so reading The Cask means we haven't met this famous detective yet. We do meet a whole bunch of other people though, and they spend much of their time either sending a cask back and forth between Paris and London, hauling the cask to the docks in Paris and London, putting whatever is put into the cask, which could be quite a number of things, rare coins, statues, even a body, stealing the cask, or trying to find the cask. How's that for a summary.
Our book begins with the cask arriving in London, the director of a Steam Navigation Company (whatever that is) sees that a shipment of wine they are expecting has come in and he sends a "reliable man" to the docks to make sure everything is how it should be. It isn't. Broughton (that's the reliable guy) goes down to the docks and watches the casks being unloaded, when there is a problem, four casks fall out of the sling and land on their sides on the dock. One of these casks was found to be different from the rest, it was more strongly made and better finished and they knew it didn't have wine in it because they could see a heap of sawdust which escaped from a crack at one end. Broughton and the foreman, Harkness, see not just sawdust but also coins, and now were so curious as to what was in the cask they opened it and found it filled with gold coins, almost filled with them. There were three things in the cask, coins, sawdust, and a hand. That's what they saw at the time anyway, the hand later was found to be attached to a body. On the side of the cask is the name and address of the man who is supposed to be getting this lovely package, M. Leon Felix, and it is marked as containing statuary. Now the "fun" begins. Broughton goes off to the head office to report the find (why he isn't going to the police I don't know), and leaves Harkness guarding their treasure. Meanwhile Mr. Felix arrives to pick up his cask which they won't give him telling him he must go to the office first. Meanwhile Broughton and Mr. Avery go to the police, and after explaining the reason they are there Inspector Burnley goes with them to open the cask. When they get there, it is gone. A man of middle height, foreign-looking, with dark eyes and a short, pointed beard had showed up with the right paperwork and taken it. Ok, quickly now - I'm getting tired of writing this, Inspector Burnley and Broughton go off searching for the cask and they find it, after they find it it disappears again, then it turns up in Paris, but before anyone can get to it, it's back in London, then Paris, then London, you get the idea. We do somewhere along the way get the body out of it which at least puts us on the right track, and we get another inspector to help us, Inspector La Touche, I can't remember his first name. It's good he shows up or we'd still be going back and forth between the two cities. As for the cask, it has been quite busy, at one time or another it carried, sawdust, two statues, one of two women standing and one sitting, another with two women sitting and one standing, gold coins and a body. I don't know what happened to the wine. Going back and forth between cities, London and Paris, I just thought of a wonderful name for the book, "A Tale of Two Cities", but I believe that title may have already been taken. :-) Happy reading.
Anyway, back to our author, way back in 1912 Crofts found himself working as a Junior Assistant to his uncle who was the chief engineer of the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway. He also got married about the same time, to the daughter of a bank manager, Mary Bellas Canning. (That's her name not the bank manager's) What he wanted to do was write, so in 1929 he abandoned his railway engineering career to become a full-time writer. I wonder what his wife thought of that. He had written his first book "The Cask" in 1920 and once he got started he didn't stop, producing a book almost every year for thirty years. He is best remembered (not by anyone I know) for his detective, Inspector Joseph French, who was introduced in his fifth book "Inspector French's Greatest Case" in 1924, so reading The Cask means we haven't met this famous detective yet. We do meet a whole bunch of other people though, and they spend much of their time either sending a cask back and forth between Paris and London, hauling the cask to the docks in Paris and London, putting whatever is put into the cask, which could be quite a number of things, rare coins, statues, even a body, stealing the cask, or trying to find the cask. How's that for a summary.
Our book begins with the cask arriving in London, the director of a Steam Navigation Company (whatever that is) sees that a shipment of wine they are expecting has come in and he sends a "reliable man" to the docks to make sure everything is how it should be. It isn't. Broughton (that's the reliable guy) goes down to the docks and watches the casks being unloaded, when there is a problem, four casks fall out of the sling and land on their sides on the dock. One of these casks was found to be different from the rest, it was more strongly made and better finished and they knew it didn't have wine in it because they could see a heap of sawdust which escaped from a crack at one end. Broughton and the foreman, Harkness, see not just sawdust but also coins, and now were so curious as to what was in the cask they opened it and found it filled with gold coins, almost filled with them. There were three things in the cask, coins, sawdust, and a hand. That's what they saw at the time anyway, the hand later was found to be attached to a body. On the side of the cask is the name and address of the man who is supposed to be getting this lovely package, M. Leon Felix, and it is marked as containing statuary. Now the "fun" begins. Broughton goes off to the head office to report the find (why he isn't going to the police I don't know), and leaves Harkness guarding their treasure. Meanwhile Mr. Felix arrives to pick up his cask which they won't give him telling him he must go to the office first. Meanwhile Broughton and Mr. Avery go to the police, and after explaining the reason they are there Inspector Burnley goes with them to open the cask. When they get there, it is gone. A man of middle height, foreign-looking, with dark eyes and a short, pointed beard had showed up with the right paperwork and taken it. Ok, quickly now - I'm getting tired of writing this, Inspector Burnley and Broughton go off searching for the cask and they find it, after they find it it disappears again, then it turns up in Paris, but before anyone can get to it, it's back in London, then Paris, then London, you get the idea. We do somewhere along the way get the body out of it which at least puts us on the right track, and we get another inspector to help us, Inspector La Touche, I can't remember his first name. It's good he shows up or we'd still be going back and forth between the two cities. As for the cask, it has been quite busy, at one time or another it carried, sawdust, two statues, one of two women standing and one sitting, another with two women sitting and one standing, gold coins and a body. I don't know what happened to the wine. Going back and forth between cities, London and Paris, I just thought of a wonderful name for the book, "A Tale of Two Cities", but I believe that title may have already been taken. :-) Happy reading.
August 5, 2020
Somehow I managed to get to the year 2020 without having heard of Crofts, even though I have been a big fan of classic mysteries for years and years. At one time, his name was mentioned as a great writer alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers but unlike their lasting popularity, his has faded. Not sure what the accepted reason why is.
I do feel that this novel seems more dated than Christie and Sayers. There also wasn't a compelling lead detective in the book, a la a Poirot or Wimsey. The solving or the mystery had more of an old-school Sherlock Holmes feel to it. Lots of searching the ground for clues, using a magnifying glass. All the vintage crime detection tricks are in here - measuring mysterious footprints, handwriting experts debating if a letter is forged or not, a typewriter with a messed up key so an anonymous letter can be traced by the machine it was typed on, etc. I find it diverting to read, how different it all used to be.
One thing that really struck me was the leisurely pace of the investigation. At one point, after a cop has finished interviewing a suspect, it's decided that the cop will just sleep in the suspect's living room, in an armchair, until morning because...I didn't really grasp the rationale. Another time, a cop comes to interview another suspect who has just gotten home so the cop waits for an hour in the suspect's library, reading a book, while the suspect changes clothes and then eats dinner. "Ok, now I'm ready to be interrogated!" Haha. When the English cop goes to Paris to follow some clues, he makes sure to leave himself plenty of time to try out some new restaurants and go to the Folies Bergere. There is a lot of pointless traveling to check out alibis. I mean, they had phones back then - why didn't they just make some phone calls? Why the constant traveling for a 5 minute discussion with a hotel clerk? Quite the easy pace of living!
I probably won't be rushing out to read another book of his but I am glad I read this so I could form my own opinion of Crofts.
I do feel that this novel seems more dated than Christie and Sayers. There also wasn't a compelling lead detective in the book, a la a Poirot or Wimsey. The solving or the mystery had more of an old-school Sherlock Holmes feel to it. Lots of searching the ground for clues, using a magnifying glass. All the vintage crime detection tricks are in here - measuring mysterious footprints, handwriting experts debating if a letter is forged or not, a typewriter with a messed up key so an anonymous letter can be traced by the machine it was typed on, etc. I find it diverting to read, how different it all used to be.
One thing that really struck me was the leisurely pace of the investigation. At one point, after a cop has finished interviewing a suspect, it's decided that the cop will just sleep in the suspect's living room, in an armchair, until morning because...I didn't really grasp the rationale. Another time, a cop comes to interview another suspect who has just gotten home so the cop waits for an hour in the suspect's library, reading a book, while the suspect changes clothes and then eats dinner. "Ok, now I'm ready to be interrogated!" Haha. When the English cop goes to Paris to follow some clues, he makes sure to leave himself plenty of time to try out some new restaurants and go to the Folies Bergere. There is a lot of pointless traveling to check out alibis. I mean, they had phones back then - why didn't they just make some phone calls? Why the constant traveling for a 5 minute discussion with a hotel clerk? Quite the easy pace of living!
I probably won't be rushing out to read another book of his but I am glad I read this so I could form my own opinion of Crofts.
September 8, 2014
The beginning suffers a bit from showing us every bit of movement made and thought by the investigating police, and could have used a heavier hand by an editor. However, about the last third of the book when a lawyer gets involved and then a private detective is involved the story actually comes to life and it feels like you are reading about people and not just sifting through facts.
It certainly feels like a book that was written before 1920, though the copyright is 1920. In those 1910 years the books could be quite "tedious" for a reader from the 21st century. The book reflects style of the time and while Crofts has put together a wonderful crime to solve- he hasn't in this first book mastered bringing more live and vigor to the characters in the book. It does however, feel like what any policeman would have to do to pick up all the pieces of an investigation.
If you are interested in the period and this style you will enjoy the book. For me it was an easy book to put down and hard to get going with it. I persevered due to the fact that I've read another one and found it was of interest, and the end of this book was closer to the other book- more lively.
Fave quote: La Touche has just gained an important clue! "I cannot say, monsieur, how obliged I am to you," said La Touche in heartfelt tones, and by a sort of legerdemain, of which both participants remained profoundly unconscious, a twenty-franc bill passed from hand to hand. La Touche was extraordinarily pleased. He had broken the alibi.
It certainly feels like a book that was written before 1920, though the copyright is 1920. In those 1910 years the books could be quite "tedious" for a reader from the 21st century. The book reflects style of the time and while Crofts has put together a wonderful crime to solve- he hasn't in this first book mastered bringing more live and vigor to the characters in the book. It does however, feel like what any policeman would have to do to pick up all the pieces of an investigation.
If you are interested in the period and this style you will enjoy the book. For me it was an easy book to put down and hard to get going with it. I persevered due to the fact that I've read another one and found it was of interest, and the end of this book was closer to the other book- more lively.
Fave quote: La Touche has just gained an important clue! "I cannot say, monsieur, how obliged I am to you," said La Touche in heartfelt tones, and by a sort of legerdemain, of which both participants remained profoundly unconscious, a twenty-franc bill passed from hand to hand. La Touche was extraordinarily pleased. He had broken the alibi.
March 15, 2021
A decent first novel, if a little long. Party mystery, part police procedural. I understand this author ranks up there with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers, but I hadn't heard of him before this.
The first section is policework, building the case against the shocked addressee of a cask containing coins and a body. In the second half, a defense is built, with another detective covering the same ground but from different angles. In both, the author lovingly describes pre-Great War London and France, going into a bit too much detail on the travel at times.
In addition to being a bit too wordy, the ending is very short. I can't say more without spoilers, but perhaps this was because the mystery genre was still evolving. Certainly some of the deductions were worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
Each year I try to read something from more than a century ago, and while wandering through Project Gutenberg I found this title. I didn't enjoy it as much as Doyle or Wells, but I'd like to try out another from this author - perhaps with his most famous protagonist, Inspector French.
The first section is policework, building the case against the shocked addressee of a cask containing coins and a body. In the second half, a defense is built, with another detective covering the same ground but from different angles. In both, the author lovingly describes pre-Great War London and France, going into a bit too much detail on the travel at times.
In addition to being a bit too wordy, the ending is very short. I can't say more without spoilers, but perhaps this was because the mystery genre was still evolving. Certainly some of the deductions were worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
Each year I try to read something from more than a century ago, and while wandering through Project Gutenberg I found this title. I didn't enjoy it as much as Doyle or Wells, but I'd like to try out another from this author - perhaps with his most famous protagonist, Inspector French.
January 13, 2020
This is a comlicated mystery in two parts. The murder of young woman leads Inspector Burnley to France and back. Once he has determined his suspect, a private investigator acting for the defense, takes over trying to prove the suspect's innocence. The story goes on too long and is over-complicated, but is entertaining. I like Crofts' work since he sticks with the mystery and adds just enough personal aspects to flesh out the investigators.
May 6, 2023
Complicated but charming.
February 16, 2025
I enjoy Croft’s other mysteries, thorough in investigative details but moving at a fair clip, but The Cask is incredibly dull and repetitive, eg. a Scotland Yard man, having finished his day’s work in Paris, sits on a bench to think on his findings for a couple of pages, then writes down the exact same details in his notebook for us to also read, then immediately goes to the French police and shares the exact same details for the THIRD time. This would be a great book at a third or a quarter the length.
March 31, 2024
Excellent suspense bien documenté
November 24, 2021
There are a whole lot of twists and turns in this 1920 story of a devious murder. And the reader is along for the ride as author Freeman Wills Crofts takes the story step by step through the police investigation, as well as the steps taken by a private detective to dispute some of the so called 'facts.' Amazing to realize that this book, Crofts first, is an excellent example of what a police procedural is — these days readers and TV viewers only get a hit at how much work there is to find clues and a probable cause to charge an individual and this was all done at a time that fingerprints were relatively new in the investigation of a crime Scotland Yard began identifying criminals using fingerprints in 1901.
In this outing, there is truly a muddle for police to decipher with a wooden cask that apparently makes its appearance in numerous places. The tale begins with the arrival of the cask on the docks of the Continental Steam Navigation Company, where it is unloaded with three casks of wine and because it is heavier, tilts the load and drops, damaging the lid and discharging sawdust. When examined, there is a frightening sight: what looks like the body of a woman.
The crate is claimed by M. Leon Felix, whose actions are a bit suspicious by the freight company officials. And it gets worse ...
With the cask's disappearance, Continental calls in Inspector Burnley of Scotland Yard, who begins a methodical investigation in which clues are slowly gathered and needless to say, they all point to Felix.
While for modern readers, the amount of detail given by Crofts may be off-putting, but wow, it is something to feel that you are walking along side the detectives in the search for truth and understanding.
And how can you not read the book when you realize that Crofts is recognized as one of the masters of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Quite an accomplishment — and this was his first book, written during a long illness! And since that first book, Crofts wrote a book every year for 30 years. I have read three of his works and look forward to more.
In this outing, there is truly a muddle for police to decipher with a wooden cask that apparently makes its appearance in numerous places. The tale begins with the arrival of the cask on the docks of the Continental Steam Navigation Company, where it is unloaded with three casks of wine and because it is heavier, tilts the load and drops, damaging the lid and discharging sawdust. When examined, there is a frightening sight: what looks like the body of a woman.
The crate is claimed by M. Leon Felix, whose actions are a bit suspicious by the freight company officials. And it gets worse ...
With the cask's disappearance, Continental calls in Inspector Burnley of Scotland Yard, who begins a methodical investigation in which clues are slowly gathered and needless to say, they all point to Felix.
While for modern readers, the amount of detail given by Crofts may be off-putting, but wow, it is something to feel that you are walking along side the detectives in the search for truth and understanding.
And how can you not read the book when you realize that Crofts is recognized as one of the masters of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Quite an accomplishment — and this was his first book, written during a long illness! And since that first book, Crofts wrote a book every year for 30 years. I have read three of his works and look forward to more.
March 20, 2019
Well deserved to be called a classic of the detective genre. Mostly a police procedural, they come to the wrong conclusion and the last third is handled by a private detective for the accused. The only weakness is the use of the “brain fever” device, removing a character from being able to give information that would have changed the way the police proceeded. There were a few clues that the police did not ask about and some missed questions they could of asked but in all a very tight and fair mystery.
November 3, 2019
Seemingly written by a Mechanical Turk and possessing not a scrap of real emotion or psychology, The Cask nonetheless makes for an interesting chess problem of a mystery. I cackled at myself from a lofty, snobby height as I raced along to its "climactic" ending. If you think you might enjoy mysteries that are solved by a keen understanding of train schedules, you will love, or at least be mildly attracted to, The Cask.
August 3, 2012
It does go into excrutiating detail at times and it is probably longer than it needs to be. Yet despite it's flaws I think it does deserve it's reputation of being a minor classic of the Detective genre.
Early police procedural, with a good mystery, and more than a few interesting twists and turns
Early police procedural, with a good mystery, and more than a few interesting twists and turns
December 11, 2017
A slow start but a most interesting and detailed book, the ending was well written and the journey was with waiting for, it's worth remembering the age of the book and reading it with this in mind. We tell stories differently today so the style can seem odd. Don't worry about it and enjoy reading something different.
October 23, 2012
If I could give three and a half stars to this novel, I definitely would! An intriguing and entertaining golden age mystery with so many strands, twists and turns I was desparate to discover "who dunnit."
April 24, 2015
This is a pretty fair police procedural by an English author, who was well known in the 30's and 40's. I don't read too many of these because the focus is on procedure and I'm more interested in characterization than so many details that, after awhile , it just gets boring.
June 30, 2021
A dizzying amount of channel crossings are involved in this plot. Interesting to read this early mystery, although there are only ever two real suspects, and the book seems a little too long to reach its conclusion.
June 15, 2023
Extremely satisfying mystery!
May 7, 2024
This is the first novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, and it has both similarities to and differences from his later works. The main thing that's the same is that the criminal is highly intelligent and capable and comes up with a complicated plot that initially baffles the investigators, but, by dogged perseverance, they eventually solve it. The main difference is a spoiler:
The appeal in this author's books is the puzzle or mystery, rather than the characters and their interactions, and the systematic approach to solving the mystery can become tedious at times. Also, in this case at least, there are multiple people who are involved in the solution, so there isn't a single protagonist that we follow all the way through. Among the careful checking of alibis and interviewing carters, porters, and other witnesses are a couple of action scenes, but mostly it's very procedural.
There's a scene, too, where a couple of things don't make sense. The detective is interviewing an informant, a typist who has been laid off, and observes that her good dress shows that her loss of employment hasn't placed her in want. However, she only lost her job a few weeks before, and presumably bought the dress while still employed, so it doesn't show anything of the kind. Also, when asked if she can prove that she worked for a particular firm for two years, she says she can't, but later in the same scene hands over a reference letter which proves exactly that. It has the feel of a scene that was added late and not properly revised or thought through, though of course I have no way of verifying that guess.
Otherwise, though, it's a meticulously crafted puzzle with some twists and turns, and an intriguing mystery. Not as good as this author's books later became, which is to be expected from a first novel, but I can see why it was popular enough that he kept writing.
The appeal in this author's books is the puzzle or mystery, rather than the characters and their interactions, and the systematic approach to solving the mystery can become tedious at times. Also, in this case at least, there are multiple people who are involved in the solution, so there isn't a single protagonist that we follow all the way through. Among the careful checking of alibis and interviewing carters, porters, and other witnesses are a couple of action scenes, but mostly it's very procedural.
There's a scene, too, where a couple of things don't make sense. The detective is interviewing an informant, a typist who has been laid off, and observes that her good dress shows that her loss of employment hasn't placed her in want. However, she only lost her job a few weeks before, and presumably bought the dress while still employed, so it doesn't show anything of the kind. Also, when asked if she can prove that she worked for a particular firm for two years, she says she can't, but later in the same scene hands over a reference letter which proves exactly that. It has the feel of a scene that was added late and not properly revised or thought through, though of course I have no way of verifying that guess.
Otherwise, though, it's a meticulously crafted puzzle with some twists and turns, and an intriguing mystery. Not as good as this author's books later became, which is to be expected from a first novel, but I can see why it was popular enough that he kept writing.
March 6, 2024
The writer and critic Julian Symons dubbed Wills Crofts' style of mystery the "humdrum" school, and there can be few crime novels more humdrum than this, his first novel.
The plodding nature of the story is felt more in the detectives' painfully slow reasoning than in their exhaustively detailed procedural investigations. Their delay in drawing the most blindingly obvious inductions drove this reader to distraction.
At one point, an experienced police detective reflects that nobody in the case seems to have any motive for murder… shortly after being told that . It's only after paragraph after tedious paragraph of reviewing the facts that the detective finally hits upon the bright idea that this gives a motive.
There were multiple other instances nearly as bad, as well as elementary failures of investigation (fingerprints are never collected or checked, even though they had become a standard tool by 1912, when the story is set), and also some plot holes.
On the positive side, the crime is at least interesting. And as in many of his later books, Wills Crofts pays a lot of attention to the pleasures of travel, with the detectives spending a significant amount of their time acting as tourists and taking long lunches with wine or beer, and this lends the book a travelogue appeal.
The plodding nature of the story is felt more in the detectives' painfully slow reasoning than in their exhaustively detailed procedural investigations. Their delay in drawing the most blindingly obvious inductions drove this reader to distraction.
At one point, an experienced police detective reflects that nobody in the case seems to have any motive for murder… shortly after being told that . It's only after paragraph after tedious paragraph of reviewing the facts that the detective finally hits upon the bright idea that this gives a motive.
There were multiple other instances nearly as bad, as well as elementary failures of investigation (fingerprints are never collected or checked, even though they had become a standard tool by 1912, when the story is set), and also some plot holes.
On the positive side, the crime is at least interesting. And as in many of his later books, Wills Crofts pays a lot of attention to the pleasures of travel, with the detectives spending a significant amount of their time acting as tourists and taking long lunches with wine or beer, and this lends the book a travelogue appeal.
April 29, 2024
An interesting read from 1920, though the book was based in 1912. I won’t go into the plot because if you’re reading this review you have probably read other reviews and so are familiar with what it’s about. I agree with many of the criticisms offered by other readers but it must be remembered that this was Crofts first novel and it was written over a century ago. The style of writing is occasionally a little ponderous for 21st century readers and the novel, like life back then was a little slow. I found myself wondering why the private detective had so much more success than the police in uncovering the perpetrator. Why couldn’t Scotland Yard and the sûreté with all their resources not achieve what a private detective could? I too found the plot overly complicated and convoluted and was losing track of the journeys of the two casks. But for all that, my criticisms are minor. I enjoyed delving in to a time where Brent was still a village outside London, where horses and carts were used more than cars, people still had servants, and you could get information from people and organisations without putting in a Freedom of Information request. Instead, all you had to do was ask! 😊
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