Mystery in the Channel in Never too Late to Read Classics

Apr 16, 2018 Christine PNW rated it liked it

This was my second Inspector French mystery, which I preferred to the first, The Hog’s Back Mystery. My primary complaint about The Hog’s Back Mystery was that it got bogged down in tedious detailing of the clues, and that Crofts skimped on supporting character development, resulting in characters who were difficult to tell apart.

To be quite frank, those complaints remained in this installment, albeit to a lesser degree. The book begins with a bang – a steamer finds a yacht dead in the water, wi This was my second Inspector French mystery, which I preferred to the first, The Hog’s Back Mystery. My primary complaint about The Hog’s Back Mystery was that it got bogged down in tedious detailing of the clues, and that Crofts skimped on supporting character development, resulting in characters who were difficult to tell apart.

To be quite frank, those complaints remained in this installment, albeit to a lesser degree. The book begins with a bang – a steamer finds a yacht dead in the water, with two dead bodies on board. From there, it is towed back to port, where the dead are speedily identified and the search for the murderer commences.

Thinking back on the book at its conclusion, I do not think that there was a single female character in this book. Inspector French may have spoken to a female shopkeeper at some point during the tale while he was canvassing for information about a suspect, but, if he did, it was in such passing that it didn’t register with me at all. Every character of consequence in this book was a man.

It is quickly established that the two victims were principals in a financial firm which was on the brink of failure. It being 1931, there was no taxpayer funded Troubled Assets Recovery Program available to bail out the firm, or its clients, which resulted in thousands of ordinary Brits losing their fortunes, such as they were. It was also quickly established that someone had looted whatever was left of the money, and that the murders appeared to have something to do with this financial chicanery.

I loved this aspect of the book. It was, in fact, a “strikingly modern subtext.” I, like the Assistant Commissioner quoted below, find the fraudulent machinations of the already wealthy to enrich their already overflowing pockets, disgusting:

“The Assistant Commissioner was a man who, while utterly relentless in his war on crime, not infrequently showed a surprising sympathy with the criminal. He always deplored the punishment of the out-of-work or the poorly paid, who, seeing his family in want, had stolen to relieve their immediate needs. Even on occasion he had surprised French by expressing regret as to the fate of the murderers. Murderers, he held, were by no means necessarily hardened criminals. In their ranks, they numbered some of the most decent and inoffensive of men. But for the wealthy thief who stole by the manipulation of stocks and shares and other less creditable means known to high finance, whether actually within or without the limits of the law, he had only the most profound enmity and contempt.”

Trump University, anyone? To the wealthy of 2018, the poor and middle class are merely marks, and there is a sucker born every minute. How I wonder what Freeman Wills Crofts and the Assistant Commissioner would’ve thought of the band of vulpine thieves in charge of our public treasury?

Anyway, Inspector French is a rather plodding character, but in a good way. He is, perhaps, not given to flashes of insight, but he is thorough, and good police work is its own reward. Through many twists and turns and blind alleys and dead ends, he does arrive at the correct solution.

There was, again, some tedious alibi deconstruction, with time tables and analysis of ocean currents and wind direction. I’ve realized that I do not care about these things – I am not going to pull out a pad of paper and start making a little table of distances and times to see if I, before Inspector French, can bust an alibi. I just want to be entertained to the end of the tale, and this minutiae does not entertain me. This particular book is mentioned in Chapter 13 of The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, Scientific Inquiries, on the strength of this element. Apparently Crofts was an engineer, and put that background to work in his fiction.

The problem with characterization persisted in this book and was amplified by the fact that every single character of note, as I stated above, was a middle-aged white guy of moderate wealth and education. There were several occasions where a name came up that I didn’t immediately recognize, but it was clear that this character had been introduced before, so I had to flip backwards in the book to try to identify exactly who it was.

I enjoyed it enough that I will continue to explore Inspector French, but I wish that Crofts would let him off the chain a bit. The man barely has a personal life, and he seems like a decent guy. Give him a vacation, for god’s sake! ...more

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Aug 01, 2024 Natalie rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, mystery-thriller

Rating 4.5 stars. Mystery in the Channel is a very engaging mystery, with intriguing characters, a mild and tenacious inspector, French, and a fairly complicated crime that was interesting to unravel. Like any good mystery, there was plenty of tension and a surprise twist to the crime. The only weakness seemed to be a few elements that put this mystery in the early 1900s.
A boat with passengers comes across a small yacht in the English Channel with 2 dead bodies aboard. A couple sailors from the Rating 4.5 stars. Mystery in the Channel is a very engaging mystery, with intriguing characters, a mild and tenacious inspector, French, and a fairly complicated crime that was interesting to unravel. Like any good mystery, there was plenty of tension and a surprise twist to the crime. The only weakness seemed to be a few elements that put this mystery in the early 1900s.
A boat with passengers comes across a small yacht in the English Channel with 2 dead bodies aboard. A couple sailors from the larger boat board the Nymph, and sail her into port in England where various doctors and policemen examine the bodies. The case is turned over to Inspector French who is both clever and thorough. He patiently follows up leads and admirably, goes to the trouble to study shipping lanes, determine the speed of the yacht, trace missing bank notes, follow up on a mysterious order for an outboard motor, sail across the channel, and walk around the French towns where one of our suspects disappeared.
We learn that Moxon, Deeping, Raymond, Nolan, Esdale, and Knowles all worked for Moxon's General Securities which shortly after the murder of Moxon and Deeping, finds itself in deep financial straits. The heads of the company were aware of the problem and several plotted to escape with as much money as they could gather.
Through careful sleuthing, French learns the men went to various jewelers, bought uncut diamonds with small bank notes, and then hid the diamonds. The plan was that diamonds would be much easier to hide than piles of money. Moxon and Deeping were found shot to death on the Nymph and later Esdale is found dead. For a while, French suspects Esdale of committing the first crime but when he is found shot and drowned, French has to reexamine the case. An early suspect, who was eliminated based on circumstantial evidence, comes to be a suspect again.
French finally puts together the complex series of steps taken by the Moxon business partners. (view spoiler).
A couple times, French determines that people he is interviewing for information are of low intelligence. I don't think that would appear in a more modern mystery. I found it interesting. Also, almost everyone French interviews except the businessmen and a couple of sailors are honest and eager to share information, which I would doubt one would find today.
French is so hard working he's easy to like. And as the story progressed, there were new levels of complexity to the crime that made it an engaging read. The writing is clear and pacing is great. ...more

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