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Inspector French #21
Inspector French: James Tarrant, Adventurer
A classic crime novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’, featuring Inspector French, coming soon to television.
James Tarrant wants to make a lot of money. But as an assistant chemist in a sleepy village backwater his career seems to have reached a dead end and he has no way to further his ambitions. Suddenly inspiration strikes, and his goal looks to be within reach, with a willing young accomplice who will do almost anything for him. But would she go as far as murder? Inspector French is called in to investigate shady business deals, two-timers, and multiple motives for revenge. . .
James Tarrant wants to make a lot of money. But as an assistant chemist in a sleepy village backwater his career seems to have reached a dead end and he has no way to further his ambitions. Suddenly inspiration strikes, and his goal looks to be within reach, with a willing young accomplice who will do almost anything for him. But would she go as far as murder? Inspector French is called in to investigate shady business deals, two-timers, and multiple motives for revenge. . .
- GenresMystery
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1941
About the author
Freeman Wills Crofts
150 books93 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 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 20, 2023
I thought this was rather an average Inspector French novel. It also doesn’t help my rating that I guessed the killer. Another problem, IMO, is the extended trial sequence that forms he finale of the book (admittedly followed by a lively denouement). When a Mystery novel relies on a lot of courtroom stuff, I find I get very testy when those scenes are mostly - or completely - a rehash of things that were already shown in all the chapters leading up to the courtroom chapters. To the best of my recollection, two “courtroom-centric” Mystery novels I loved - The Bellamy Trial, and Verdict of Twelve - hit the reader with a lot of crazy fun NEW developments during the trial scenes; by contrast, my problem with an oldie called Family Matters, by Anthony Rolls was that I had been happy surrounded by a very odd and creepy family in that book, and then the narrative shifted to a trial, and despite attempts to make even that somewhat odd, I missed the family dynamic left behind and also felt we were covering old ground. As it happens, Family Matters doesn’t seem to have alienated the bulk of readers the way it did me in its late stages…but with this one by FWC, I’m going to pony up and call the last several chapters of this book a wrong turn and just a long recap of everything before it (except for the denouement, which perked me up again with some interesting detail-reveals, but gave me a big-picture-reveal that I had figured out).
We also lose our star, Inspector French, for much of the last stretch of the book. You would think a trial involving a murder suspect that Inspector French had helped bring in would somehow actually involve Inspector French, but services no longer required, Inspector - we barristers and judges and jury got this covered, sir, thanks all the same. Now, to be clear - and as a longtime fan of the Miss Silver Mysteries, where Miss Silver is known to be not in several of her best books much - I don’t mind if a main detective makes a minimal showing in her/his own novel. But in James Tarrant: Adventurer, not only does French go AWOL for the last chunk, he had been missing for the opening chunk. He is like a very thin slice of cheese in between very thick pieces of bread, here. But then I guess you’re okay with that, if you are on Team Inspector French Is A Plodding Bore, anyway.
So what does work? Well, this Tarrant excrescence is a wonderful, brilliant scoundrel - perhaps one of the author’s best. The intricacies of Tarrant’s money-making scheme, and manipulation of Merle’s emotions so she will get pulled right into the worst of it all against her better judgement, is fascinating. Once the Braxamin people get involved, and try to match wits with the super-scoundrel, things really get interesting; the Braxamin…oh let’s call it the Braxamin boardroom dynamic…could almost carry a Crime novel on its own merits, including the old gaffer doing comic relief, plus juicy backstabbing and long-standing animosities. But with Tarrant in the mix, let’s say drug wars have never been nastier.
As for poor Merle, I was moved by her plight as pawn who occasionally senses her pawn status and then either lumps it, or tries some small moves of her own to get the little she hopes for from all the moral or legal wibble-wobble flowing around her or shaking her around. I wanted her to kick Tarrant to the curb fifty times, and instead she steps into traffic with him. Until…
I usually have acquired Inspector French novels in bunches - four or five at a time - and the pattern of enjoyment is starting to come back to me, after the last batch from a few years ago: one great, one average, and so on like that (thankfully, true stinkers being rare). Fatal Venture, from a few weeks ago, was a blast, and then The End of Andrew Harrison dropped down to merely satisfactory…and now, James Tarrant, Adventurer, comes in a little below that, mainly due to me guessing the culprit situation. Hopefully, we can rise above routine with Found Floating, or Golden Ashes - or both - soon!
We also lose our star, Inspector French, for much of the last stretch of the book. You would think a trial involving a murder suspect that Inspector French had helped bring in would somehow actually involve Inspector French, but services no longer required, Inspector - we barristers and judges and jury got this covered, sir, thanks all the same. Now, to be clear - and as a longtime fan of the Miss Silver Mysteries, where Miss Silver is known to be not in several of her best books much - I don’t mind if a main detective makes a minimal showing in her/his own novel. But in James Tarrant: Adventurer, not only does French go AWOL for the last chunk, he had been missing for the opening chunk. He is like a very thin slice of cheese in between very thick pieces of bread, here. But then I guess you’re okay with that, if you are on Team Inspector French Is A Plodding Bore, anyway.
So what does work? Well, this Tarrant excrescence is a wonderful, brilliant scoundrel - perhaps one of the author’s best. The intricacies of Tarrant’s money-making scheme, and manipulation of Merle’s emotions so she will get pulled right into the worst of it all against her better judgement, is fascinating. Once the Braxamin people get involved, and try to match wits with the super-scoundrel, things really get interesting; the Braxamin…oh let’s call it the Braxamin boardroom dynamic…could almost carry a Crime novel on its own merits, including the old gaffer doing comic relief, plus juicy backstabbing and long-standing animosities. But with Tarrant in the mix, let’s say drug wars have never been nastier.
As for poor Merle, I was moved by her plight as pawn who occasionally senses her pawn status and then either lumps it, or tries some small moves of her own to get the little she hopes for from all the moral or legal wibble-wobble flowing around her or shaking her around. I wanted her to kick Tarrant to the curb fifty times, and instead she steps into traffic with him. Until…
I usually have acquired Inspector French novels in bunches - four or five at a time - and the pattern of enjoyment is starting to come back to me, after the last batch from a few years ago: one great, one average, and so on like that (thankfully, true stinkers being rare). Fatal Venture, from a few weeks ago, was a blast, and then The End of Andrew Harrison dropped down to merely satisfactory…and now, James Tarrant, Adventurer, comes in a little below that, mainly due to me guessing the culprit situation. Hopefully, we can rise above routine with Found Floating, or Golden Ashes - or both - soon!
November 5, 2022
Although this starts off rather like "Fatal Venture" with an extended account of a slightly dubious business enterprise, where it differs from that and many other Inspector French novels is in its depiction of character. I really felt that I came to know a lot about the main protagonists, and even minor players seemed vivid.
James Tarrant is a prime example of what is known in Scotland as "a right chancer". He is unscrupulous in his ambition to make money and rise in society, highly attractive to women yet contemptuous of them, and, while undoubtedly talented, uses his abilities solely in his own interests. He is the supreme egoist who usually features as a murderer, but here he is the victim
French is called in at an early stage, carries out a meticulous investigation and presents his findings on the basis of which arrests are made and a trial is conducted.
The trial has its interest but I felt that the evidence presented did little more than rehash, in a slightly different form, all that the reader already knew, and so I found it a trifle dull.
The "surprise" ending was as I had anticipated, but that did not spoil my enjoyment of one of the best Crofts I have read recently.
Recommended
4.25 stars.
James Tarrant is a prime example of what is known in Scotland as "a right chancer". He is unscrupulous in his ambition to make money and rise in society, highly attractive to women yet contemptuous of them, and, while undoubtedly talented, uses his abilities solely in his own interests. He is the supreme egoist who usually features as a murderer, but here he is the victim
French is called in at an early stage, carries out a meticulous investigation and presents his findings on the basis of which arrests are made and a trial is conducted.
The trial has its interest but I felt that the evidence presented did little more than rehash, in a slightly different form, all that the reader already knew, and so I found it a trifle dull.
The "surprise" ending was as I had anticipated, but that did not spoil my enjoyment of one of the best Crofts I have read recently.
Recommended
4.25 stars.
November 1, 2013
This is a book of two halves. The first half goes into great detail of the build up to why James Tarrant is going to get murdered. At the time, this reader thought that it was far too long but reading the excellent second half, when Chief Inspector French appears, it becomes clear why the first half was like this.
I would have given it five stars if it wasn't for my initial thoughts about the length of the pre-murder section but everything else was pure FWC brilliance. Plenty of detection, a brilliant courtroom section, fair play to the reader but a slightly convenient ending.
Recommended.
I would have given it five stars if it wasn't for my initial thoughts about the length of the pre-murder section but everything else was pure FWC brilliance. Plenty of detection, a brilliant courtroom section, fair play to the reader but a slightly convenient ending.
Recommended.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews