Review: The Purple Sickle Murders

The Purple Sickle Murders by Freeman Wills Crofts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I recently read the sixth Doctor Thorndyke mystery, by Austin R. Freeman, Freeman Wills Crofts' contemporary, and felt that the series was going downhill, with the author recycling his material and not coming up with much that was new. In contrast, this fifth Inspector French book shows improvement over the earlier ones, and growth in the author's abilities.

Firstly, French is less of a generic Everyman or a crime-solving plot device and more of a developed character. The fact that he talks to his wife about the case is part of this. He's done that once before in the series, but more briefly, and this longer interaction provides characterization for both of them. What's more, French displays emotion and uncertainty, his minor mistakes (and the bad, but very human, choices of other people) have consequences that increase the tension, he has an emotional connection to another character, and instead of a relatively brief action sequence at the end of a plodding police investigation, as in the earlier French books, there's an extended period spanning multiple chapters in which we're kept in suspense about the fate of a character and in which multiple action sequences, chases, fights and desperate attempts to escape occur.

It's a strong piece of work, with (as is usually the case with this author) clever criminals defeated by the perseverance and sound police work of the detective. While Austin R. Freeman's "reverse mystery" approach gave the TV series Columbo its most famous feature - that the audience knows who committed the crime from the beginning - the beloved scruffy detective himself owes a lot more to Freeman Wills Crofts, in whose books clever, arrogant criminals are brought down by persistence and sound methodology employed by a policeman with an ordinary background.

While I won't be reading more Austin W. Freeman, at least for a while, I definitely want to read more Freeman Wills Crofts, if this is any indication of the future direction of his work.

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