Review: Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery

Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A classic detective story which can be regarded as a pioneer of the "police procedural" type, though Inspector French, the Scotland Yard detective, doesn't appear until about the 60% mark. The Cheyne of the title is a remarkably gullible man, who's fooled twice by essentially the same scheme and then continues to believe the criminals when they tell him several more ridiculous stories. Still, I found the various adventurous shenanigans entertaining while waiting for him to figure out that he needs to involve the police.

Once French is on the case, he approaches it methodically and makes progress through sound detective work. I wasn't surprised to discover that the author was an engineer; French is, in a way, an engineer of a detective, working steadily and solidly and without much drama. Unlike most fictional detectives, he has no personal peculiarities to speak of, and is happily married (though his wife is only briefly mentioned). He's almost more a plot device than he is a character, at least in this book.

While the plot doesn't constantly rely on coincidence, there are a few lucky chances that keep the dull-witted Cheyne alive despite himself, one of which (a woman happens to find him after he's been injured, and gets help) is never explained; the woman subsequently becomes involved in the case, helping him to investigate, and eventually and inevitably becomes his love interest (view spoiler)[and is lightly refrigerated, in that she's kidnapped, removing her from the action but giving Cheyne a reason to finally go to the police (hide spoiler)], but we never find out why she was in that part of town (which wasn't her neighbourhood or anywhere close to it) late at night in the first place. (view spoiler)[The villains, who are not otherwise murderous nor experts in chemistry, rig up an explosive to kill Cheyne, careless of possible collateral damage, which also seems out of character for them, and by sheer chance he leaves the bag containing it on a café table while he goes to get another cup of coffee, thus saving his life. (hide spoiler)]

The conclusion of the book, once French figures out the puzzle, is rather anticlimactic. (view spoiler)[They pursue the villains to the location of the treasure, to find that the villains and almost everyone else who was with them are dead in a fight over the money; the exceptions include the female villain, who is forgiven, indeed rewarded, and doesn't face any legal consequences, and of course Joan the love interest; neither of them did anything protagonistic while waiting for rescue, though they did become friends. Cheyne doesn't face any legal consequences either, presumably because his various burglaries were attempts to get back property extorted from him that wasn't his in the first place, and he and Joan get married, having known each other a total of a few days and then thought about each other while separated for maybe six weeks. (hide spoiler)]

It's a curate's egg of a book; parts of it are excellent, mainly the parts where Cheyne is, somewhat ineptly, trying to solve the case himself and doing all kinds of daring, or rather incautious, things in pursuit of that goal. Once French arrives, it becomes less an adventure and more of a puzzle, and after French solves the puzzle, it wraps up rapidly, with any further excitement occurring off-screen and being reported after the fact. I enjoyed it despite its unevenness and the things that didn't make much sense, and would consider reading other books by the author if I was in the right mood, but it's not up to the standard of other classic books of the time.

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