Crofts, Freeman Wills - Death of a Train

Set during World War II, a network of German sympathizers plans to derail a train carrying vital war supplies. Inspector French tracks down the conspirators, nearly losing his life in a heroic final action to prevent their escape.

- Wikipedia

Death of a Train is an uneven but pleasant mystery. It is a real mixed grill of a novel, with all sorts of disparate elements going to make up the book. The book sticks closely to its main story, never digressing into the characters' personal lives or other filler. In that sense it is a pure piece of mystery storytelling. But the mystery itself is made of so many different component parts, that the book falls into numerous, nearly unconnected sections. It is not a smooth reading experience: many chapters start completely new plot threads and characters.

In addition, while there is some good detective work tracking down villains, the story is hardly a fair play, puzzle plot detective story.

Part One tells of the creation of special train to carry secret material from London to Plymouth during World War II, and its sabotage by Nazi spies. This half is almost a pure train story: the creation and wrecking of a train, and the investigation afterwards by a railroad specialist. It is mainly of interest to train buffs, but nicely done, with Crofts' professional railway expertise loading the story with vivid detail. One learns both the traditional mode of operation of classic British trains - and how these were modified under the pressure of war time. Crofts shows us both the technology of railways, and the business aspects of running a railway line. This is a full Background look at railways, the way Crofts' classic mystery novel The Cask contained an inside look at the shipping business.

This part also involves some police counter-espionage schemes, which are in the light-hearted Rogue tradition. Like the gentlemen con men who populate Rogue stories, the police here lie, cook up ingenious schemes, dress up in uniforms not their own, and engage in all sorts of sneaky - but non-violent - activities normally performed by mystery fiction's crooks.

Part Two centers on Inspector French, and contains three mysteries, that still need to be explained about the wreck in Part One. These all relate to the train - but have little connection with each other. Also disappointing: they really do not draw on most of the plot or characters seen in Part One.

1. The first, tracing down the saboteurs, is a nice bit of detection, involving movements of characters through the English countryside (Chapter 10).
2. The second, probing the leak of information, is a disappointment (Chapter 13). Crofts comes up with the most obvious solution. And it depends on security being ridiculously lax at Whitehall. This section does show some of Crofts' skill with technology.
3. The book picks up again near the finale, when more tracing of spies' activities take place. (Chapter 15). This section shows some skill with both a mini-mystery (how are the spies communicating?) and with police surveillance detective work.

In between these mysteries, there is a section on background checks of various suspects (Chapters 11-12). The novel makes the dubious suggestion that any traitor or spy in Britain would have to be ethnically German. Is this really historically accurate?

Mike Grost