Crofts, Freeman Wills - The Ponson Case (1921)

The Ponson Case (1921) is an ultimately disappointing book from Freeman Wills Crofts. It starts out well, with a beautifully written account of a summer evening at an English Country Mansion - that much discussed but seldom seen setting for Golden Age mysteries. Soon, Sir William Ponson is found dead. Who killed him? There are only three suspects, his noble son Austin, his bad-boy London playboy nephew Cosgrove, and the Mysterious Stranger whose footprints are all over the crime scene. Inspector Tanner tracks down all three men's movements for the next 300 pages. This being Crofts, both Austin and Cosgrove have alibis.

The Ponson Case has two big problems. One, is there is very little ingenuity of plot. The solution is a disappointment, the map of the countryside turns out to have nothing to do with the mystery, the Big Surprise about Sir William being blackmailed is obvious to every reader 250 pages before Scotland Yard tumbles to it, the subject of the blackmail is easy to guess, and a child of five would not be fooled by Austin's alibi.

Only Cosgrove's alibi shows ingenuity. One wishes that Crofts had included this alibi in a separate novella. It would make fun reading. The alibi is stated at the very end of Chapter 6, and investigated in Chapters 7 and 10.

The other problem is the racial slurs, something I don't recall seeing elsewhere in Crofts. By the time he insults the entire population of Portugal, it is time to give up on this book.

Inspector Tanner is an interesting character, and quite different from the later Inspector French. Tanner is a sneak, a liar, and a devious conman, who likes to dress up as a rich guy and fool suspects. Tanner is right out of the Rogue tradition of clever crooks who use underhanded schemes to swindle rich people - only Tanner performs his actions to trip up murder suspects. I've never seen a Scotland Yard man behave like this. One wishes Tanner were in a better book. I also liked his breezy tobacconist friend (Chapter 7), who aids him in identifying cigarettes.

Mike Grost

I entirely agree with Mike that this is a disappointing book: probably too long, and with a contrived and also anticlimactic solution which struggles to carry conviction. But I feel he perhaps makes too much of any differences between Tanner and French, who worked together in some later cases, and were good friends. Tanner's subterfuges were far from habitual, and it's actually rather hard to believe in his silk hat and gold-topped cane (ch. 6). And no Portuguese reader ought to feel insulted by ch. 12, especially after this lapse of time. Although Tanner had previously had a poor opinion of Portuguese people, he reconsidered it when he saw the splendours of Lisbon.

I too liked Cosgrove's alibi. Readers allergic to train times however need a warning about it.

Richard Wells