title: Inspector French And The Starvel Tragedy
author:  Freeman Wills Crofts 
description: Freeman Wills Crofts was born in Dublin in 1879 and died in 1957. He worked for a Northern Irish railway company as an engineer until 1929, before turning to detective fiction His plots reveal his mathematical training and he specialised in the seemingly unbreakable alibi, laying layer upon layer within his stories. He loved ships and trains and the intricacies of transport timetables feature in many of his stories. Crofts best-known character is Inspector Joseph French. French appears for the first time in Inspector Frenchs Greatest Case. He is a detective who achieves his results through dogged persistence.
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  # INSPECTOR FRENCH AND  
  THE STARVEL TRAGEDY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Born in 1879, Freeman Wills Crofts was an Irish engineer and one of the
  preeminent writers of Golden Age detective fiction. Educated in Belfast, he
  was apprenticed at eighteen to his uncle, who was chief engineer of the
  Belfast and Northern Counties Railway. Marrying in 1912, he was to hold
  various positions in railway engineering before becoming Chief Assistant
  Engineer, and it was during an illness-induced absence from work that he wrote
  his first novel, _The Cask_ (1920), which became an international success.
  Considered a classic of the detective genre, it was followed by a steady
  production of more than thirty novels, most of which featured the meticulous
  Inspector French of Scotland Yard. An influential and key pioneer of the
  genre, Crofts became an early member of the legendary Detection Club in London
  along with Agatha Christie, Anthony Berkeley and other established mystery
  writers. He also wrote numerous plays f