The Groote Park Murder

Detective Club Crime Classics

By: Freeman Wills Crofts

Narrated by: Crawford Logan

From a murder in South Africa to the tracking down of a master criminal in northern Scotland, this is a true classic of Golden Age detective fiction by one of its most accomplished champions.

When a signalman discovers a mutilated body inside a railway tunnel near Groote Park, it seems to be a straightforward case of a man struck by a passing train. But Inspector Vandam of the Middeldorp police isn’t satisfied that Albert Smith’s death was accidental, and he sets out to prove foul play in a baffling mystery which crosses continents from deepest South Africa to the wilds of northern Scotland, where an almost identical crime appears to have been perpetrated.

The Groote Park Murder was the last of Freeman Wills Crofts’ stand-alone crime novels, foreshadowing his iconic Inspector French series and helping to cement his reputation (according to his publishers) as ‘the greatest and most popular detective writer in the world’. Like The Cask, The Ponson Case and The Pit-Prop Syndicate before it, here were a delightfully ingenious plot, impeccable handling of detail and an overwhelming surprise ‘curtain’ from a masterful crime writer on the cusp of global success.

This Detective Club classic is introduced with an essay by Freeman Wills Crofts, unseen since 1937, about The Writing of a Detective Novel.

©2019 Freeman Wills Crofts (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers

Classic mystery.

The story keeps the reader guessing to the end. A cerebral mystery with elegant prose.

deceptively simple story will keep you engaged

This is an engaging story that has stood the test of time. All of the elements of the solution are there so you can work it out, but much like the detectives putting all the threads together can be a challenge. Even if you think you have it there's enough element of doubt to make you second guess.

Croft provides just the right amount of scene setting that you can picture places and action, but not so much you feel that it weighs the story down. in fact there are very few sentences that are not connected to the tale the book never drags.

The narration is great as well giving each character their personality, but never jarring or over the top.

I great story and listen. Croft may not be as well known as Christie or Sayers, but he has every right to be included.

a great intrigue

great plot, well written and well narrated. I had some issues with the subtle racism displayed in its pages. however this is a product of its time and setting and is an accurate display of the culture in that time and place.
this story leads you on a chase from south Africa to the highlands of Scotland.

ENJOYABLE

The plot moves along briskly, covering surprisingly considerable geography. The characters are English or how the author saw them; not very real even when supposedly unadorned and typical. But it's an interesting mystery and the author has taken care to play fair and still provide an enjoyable tale.

The Soundest Builder of Them All

This is really two books. The first, “South Africa”, is workmanlike and straightforward. There's no real character development. There’s no witty banter between the detective and his trusty sidekick (there’s no trusty sidekick, either). No amusing ancillary characters (like Tommy and Tuppence’s office boy, Albert). There isn’t even a picturesque description of a city or countryside. No, in this first part, Freeman Wills Crofts lives up to his reputation as a founder of the “police procedural” school of crime writing or, what Julian Symons rather unkindly called, “the humdrum school”.

In the second half, entitled “Scotland”, everything changes. We get yards of bucolic description; characters interact more deeply; there are even occasional flashes of humor. A new, more inventive detective takes up the trail, and while he follows procedures too, we also get a cliffhanger, life-and-death rescue. Are some plot turns predictable? One or two, certainly. A stock phrase that P. G. Wodehouse made fun of, the heroine’s anguished, “Oh, if I had only known!” makes its appearance too, though it’s spoken by a man. And yet I kept listening.

Why? The story. As Raymond Chandler wrote, Crofts was “the soundest builder of them all”. Chandler’s addendum, “when he doesn’t get too fancy” really doesn’t apply here; admittedly, there are more train timetables than is convenient in an audiobook, but that’s not Crofts’ fault; he was writing for readers who could flip back a couple of pages. I just enjoyed the story. And, if humor really isn’t there, the two other things for which we turn to Golden Age detective fiction are: a terrific surprise (at least to me) ending, and the pleasure of seeing justice done. And Crawford Logan is about as spot-on perfect as Gordon Griffin.

Different

By different I mean that it might better have been the screenplay of a TV show. Very matter-of-fact (evidently Croft was considered "humdrum" by some) especially the way the narrator read it in such a straightforward way. Also it was as if the protagonist role shifted throughout the story, first we identify with Inspector Van Dam for quite a long stretch of the story, then he's dropped never to be heard from again. Also the degree of granular detail in the beginning (excessive) varies later, even to sweeping generalities. The story does get more interesting as you go along, I almost quit before it did. Worth a listen if you like Golden Age mysteries.

Story is Very Dated and Boring with it.

A police procedural with no procedure. The book should have been half its length to hold any interest whatsoever. I'm surprised that the author was ever compared to P.D. James, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie or John LaCarre. How insulting for these worthy authors.