Get It Now The Cask: A Detective Story Club Classic Crime Novel (The Detective Club) Developed By Freeman Wills Crofts Available As Bound Copy

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 reinvestigate 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, 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, 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, though the copyright is, In thoseyears the books could be quite "tedious" for a reader from thest 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 twentyfranc bill passed from hand to hand.
La Touche was extraordinarily pleased, He had broken the alibi, 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, sitelinkThe Cask another one of this author's books that I've never heard of is a novel written by sitelinkFreeman Wills Crofts again who I never heard of before I read one or two of his other novels was published in.
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 inCrofts 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 inhe abandoned his railway engineering career to become a fulltime writer, I wonder what his wife thought of that, He had written his first book "The Cask" inand 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, 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, foreignlooking, 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.


This was the authors 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.

Somehow I managed to get to the yearwithout 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 oldschool 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 aminute 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.
My preference for Agatha Christies 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 slowpaced and the actual mystery doesnt kick in till the start of chapter,

Nevertheless I would recommend this book to every mystery enthusiast, .