This book, one of Freeman Wills Crofts’s best, is in two parts: the first set in South Africa, the second mainly in Scotland.  Published in 1924, it was his fourth novel, the last before his Inspector French series began.  And indeed the mischief here is strictly off French’s beat.  In South Africa, Inspector Vandam is in charge; in Scotland, Inspector Ross.

Those who dislike train times may be assured that in The Groote Park Murder the occasional references to them are only incidental, not an essential part of the plot.  And there are none of the author’s other specialities.  The false alibi tricks in this book are quite simple.

The Groote Park botanical gardens are the pride of Middeldorp, an imaginary South African town nearly 1000 miles inland from Cape Town.  Three people, colleagues in a large shop, receive forged or anonymous letters luring them to the park late one evening.

One of the three is sandbagged on arrival, and later run over by the northbound mail train; his reported fortune in diamonds cannot be found.  One of the others, the hero of the story, is arrested and tried for the murder but eventually acquitted; he then treks up to Rhodesia, and strikes gold.

Nearly three years later several of the dramatis personæ reappear in the Old Country.  They had lost touch with each other, and the story brings them back together with eventually fateful results, matrimonial and patibulary.  In a close parallel with the South African crime, forged letters decoy two of the characters to remote locations in the Highlands of Scotland.  Again one of them is sandbagged on arrival, and the other is suspected of having done it.  A dramatic surprise ending then reveals the author of both crimes: the one in South Africa as well as the Scottish.

Unfortunately there is little local colour in the South African part of the story; probably Crofts had never been there.  But he knew his Scottish Highlands, and obviously enjoyed describing an exciting race to Crianlarich and a later expedition to Glencoe and Ballachulish.

The romance between the hero and the heroine is very conventional, of course, but not without its moving moments.

Richard Wells

A

Excellent early Crofts.  The first part is set in South Africa, but isn’t Boer-ing; and the second two years later in Scotland.  Detection throughout is excellent—lots of detail, particularly of suspects’ movements.  (A map of Scotland is a good idea, particularly for those of us who read our Gladys Mitchell with an atlas to hand—good fun for armchair travellers!)  Crofts’s detective technique: instead of spreading suspicion among half a dozen people, the police follow leads and investigate each suspect in turn.  There are, in fact, only two suspects, and by the penultimate chapter, Inspector Ross knows who the murderer is, but has to break down a (rather disappointing) unbreakable alibi.  The solution anticipates The Sea Mystery: ***the obvious suspect turns out to be the “victim” in disguise—something I never suspected!***  Everything fits beautifully logically together, and although the plot does hark back to Victorian melodrama,  (wicked half-brothers and wrongfully accused heroes—named Crawley (!)—who finally win the hand of the loyal heroine), this only adds to the charm.  Excellent stuff.

·        Murderer lays false trail incriminating Crawley.

·        After police arrest Crawley, his friends (fiancée and lawyer) detect to prove innocence—The Cask; Coles’ Brooklyn Murders.

·        Scottish setting: Sayers’s Five Red Herrings (Ballachulish); Mitchell’s My Father Sleeps (Oban, Rannoch Moor) and Noonday and Night (Fort William).

Nick Fuller.

See also: http://vintagepopfictions.blogspot.com/2011/11/groote-park-murder-by-freeman-wills.html