Freeman Wills Crofts

Freeman Wills Crofts (born June 1, 1879 in Dublin , † April 11, 1957 in Worthing , West Sussex ) was an Irish writer.

Crofts was the son of the medical officer Freeman Wills Crofts (Army Medical Service) and his wife Celia Frances Wise. His father died before he was born, and his mother married the preacher Jonathan Harding in 1882 . The family settled in Belfast, where Crofts attended Methodist College from 1891 to 1894 . He then successfully completed his school days at Campbell College there .

1896 came Crofts to his uncle, the chief engineer of the Belfast & Northern Countries Railway Berkbaeley Deane Wise , who promoted him and gave him the same training. Just three years later, Crofts was involved as an assistant engineer in the construction of the Londonderry & Strabane Railway . In 1890, Crofts found employment as a senior engineer with the Coleraine, Belfast & Northern Counties Railway .

On September 12, 1912, Crofts married Mary Bellas Canning, a daughter of the banker John Canning . The marriage remained childless. In addition to his job, Crofts was an avid organist and leader of a church choir. When Crofts fell ill in 1919, his family doctor recommended Adam Mathers' letter as a distraction. The Cask (Eng. "The woman in the barrel") emerged from the first amateurish attempts .

Encouraged by the overwhelming success of his debut, Crofts began to study literature and writing seriously. The audience was enthusiastic from the very first work and the literary criticism found almost nothing but praise; the writer Julian Symons rejected Croft's literary work, but other colleagues, such as Raymond Chandler , admired him. Agatha Christie parodied Croft's character “Inspector French” in her 1929 work “Partners in Crime” ( Pandora's Box ).

In 1929, Crofts gave up his engineering career and devoted himself only to writing. To do this, he and his wife settled in Blackheath near Guilford ( Surrey ). In 1930 Crofts became an active member of the Detection Club and thus a club colleague a. a. by Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers . In 1939 he was accepted by the Royal Society of Arts .

Between 1943 and 1945 Crofts wrote 23 pieces of 30 minutes each for the BBC , which were published in 1947 under the title Murderers make mistakes . In 1953 Crofts settled with his wife in the coastal town of Worthing in West Sussex, where his last work Anything to declare? originated. There he died at the age of 77 on April 11, 1957.

Crofts' literary work consists almost entirely of detective novels. The only exceptions are the children's book Young Robin Brand , which was written in 1947, and his work The Four Gospels in One Story, Written as a Modern Biography, published in 1949 .

Works

• Affair at Little Wokeham . 1943
• Antidote to Venom . 1938
• Anything to Declare? 1957
• The Box Office Murders . 1928
• Crime at Guildford . 1935; German The Crime of Guildford , Heyne, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-453-10341-6 .
• Death of a Train Penguin, London 1953
• Death on the way . 1932
• Double murder . Heyne, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-02685-3 (together with Valentine Williams )
• The End of Andrew Harrison 1938
• Enemy Unseen . Hodder & Stoughton, London 1952
• It was murder. Detective novel ("The Groote Park Murder"). Desch, Munich 1960
• Fear comes to Chalfont . 1942
• The Four Gospels in One Story, Written in a Modern Biography . 1949
• French Strikes Oil . 1952
• Found floating . 1937
• The woman in the barrel. A classic detective novel ("The Cask"). Heyne, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-453-10168-5 .
• The mysterious letter. A classic detective novel from 1926 ("Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery"). Heyne, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-453-10758-6 .
• Golden Ashes . Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1959
• The Hog's Back Mystery . 1933
• Inspector French intervenes. Detektic novel ("Sudden Death"). Upward publishing house, Berlin 1936
• Inspector French's most difficult case. A classic detective novel from 1925 ("Inspector French's Greatest Case"). Heyne, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-453-10673-3 .
• James Tarrant, Adventurer . 1941
• John Woo's Maddog 1945
• The Losing Game . 1941
• The Loss of the Jane Vosper . 1936
• Man overboard! 1936
• Murders Make Mistakes . 1947
• Mystery in the Channel . 1931
• Mystery on Southampton Water . 1934
• The Pit Prop Syndicate . Collins, London 1966
• The Ponson Case . Collins, London 1928
• The black and white hole in the alibi. A classic detective novel from 1939 ("Fatal Venture"). Heyne, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-453-10439-8
• The Sea Mystery. To Inspector French Case . Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1959
• Silence for the Murderer . 1949
• Sir John Magill's Last Journey . 1928
• The Starvel Tragedy. Detective novel ("Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy"). Oldenburg Verlag, Leipzig 1930
• The 12.30 from Croydon . Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1960 (US edition "Wilful and Premeditated")
• Young Robin Brand . 1947

literature

• Melvyn P. Barnes: Murder in print. A guide of two centuries of crime fiction . Barn Owl Books, London 1986, ISBN 0-9509057-4-7 .
• Agatha Christie: Pandora's box ("Partners in crime"). Fischer, Frankfurt / M. 2004, ISBN 3-596-16830-9 .
• John M. Reilly (Ed.): Twentieth-century crime and mystery writers, St. James PRess, London 1985, ISBN 0-912289-17-1 .
• Henry D. Thomson: Masters of Mystery. A study of the detective story . Dover Books, New York 1978, ISBN 0-486-23606-4 (Repr. Of Folcroft, PA 1931)

Web links

• Literature by and about Freeman Wills Crofts in the catalog of the German National Library