The Girl Who Wasn't There

"Virtue has its own reward, but no box office"

- Mae West

When in doubt, read a Crofts.

Inspector French series
Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy (1927)
Inspector French and the Box Office Murders (1929)
The 12:30 from Croydon (1934)
Mystery on Southampton Water (1934)
The Loss of the Jane Vosper (1936)
Fatal Venture (1939)

Miss Thurza Darke had been advised by a mutual acquaintance to confide her strange tale to the police, but at first, Inspector French had no expectations of whatever the box office girl could tell him. That is of course, until she actually told him why she feared for her life. The young woman had been duped into a debt through a devious con scheme, and by the time she realized that her friend, another box office girl who had died some months earlier in a supposed suicide, had been swindled too by this same person, it was already too late. Her creditors now want Thurza to perform a certain, but yet unspecified action at her film theatre to repay her debt, but she is terribly afraid she'll eventually be killed, just like her friend in a way so the police will think it's a suicide. Inspector French tells Thurza to pretend she'll go along with the scheme, and that the police will stake-out their meeting tomorrow to nab the gang, but Thurza disappears the same day, and her body is found later drowned in, as she had feared, an apparent suicide. Realizing that the gang is far more dangerous than he had first suspected, Inspector French vowes to find the people who kiled Thurza in Freeman Wills Crofts' Inspector French and the Box Office Murders (1929).

If I had to describe Crofts' mystery novels with one single word, it'd be schemes. The criminals in Crofts' work like to plan, schedule, ploy, strategize and arrange. They don't do things haphazardly, they carefully define their goals, make lists of what has to be done, prepare for every single stage in the process and then execute their scheme. These schemes can be (barely) legal or illegal: Fatal Venture was about an ingenious business plan involving a cruise ship turning into a casino whenever it was in international waters, while The Loss of the Jane Vosper was about an insurance swindling scheme, and the inverted mystery novels The 12:30 from Croydon and Mystery on Southampton Water are about murder schemes, told from the viewpoint of a would-be murderer who carefully plans how they're going to kill their target. What these schemes all share, is the sheer attention to detail: every aspect, every single step of the plan has a purpose, whether it is of practical use for the scheme itself, or for protection, for example to delude the eyes of the public and the police. Crofts' novels are about first identifying the weak links in those schemes, which allows French to trace the individual steps in the plan, eventually revealing the complete image of the otherwise obscure plan. 

Inspector French and the Box Office Murders is a novel that does not stray from this focal point in Crofts' writing. Right from the start, this novel is basically only looking at the murky scheme involving the box office girls, with the actual murders of the box office girls playing second fiddle (at best), despite featuring in the title of the book! French's investigation is methodical, and the novel shows every single step in the police investigation. Order and method reigns here, as each action of French is a logical answer to whatever discovery or event preceeded it, which in turn is followed by a rational action. French's method is a mirror of the detailed crime scheme: he takes the time to consider each part of the flowchart, and then follows it to the next (or previous) process, taking care to understand why each action is taken by the schemers.

With the members of the gang already identified in the first chapter by Thurza's story, and the deaths of the box office girls basically confirmed as murder, the whole mystery of the book revolves around how the gang's plans involve the theatre box offices. To be honest, this part was rather easy to guess. Perhaps it was harder to guess back when this book was first published, but as soon as you hear the gang tries to involve box office girls, I'd guess that this would be one of the options to first cross your mind. Sure, Inspector French's investigation itself is fairly entertaining to follow, and the gang has laid a few traps here and there to trip French up, but ultimately, the scheme is far less... impressive than you'd hope it'd be. The road to the truth (French's investigation) is alright, but it's not something we haven't seen before in Crofts' work. Indeed, that's what makes this novel a bit underwhelming: Inspector French and the Box Office Murders does little that other Inspector French novels don't do, and what it does, is not bad per se, but certainly not remarakable compared to the other novels.

Inspector French and the Box Office Murders is thus a very typical Inspector French novel. It does everything you'd expect from such a novel, but does little beyond that and if you've read a few other Crofts before, you're sure to feel déjà vu. It does nothing really wrong, but Inspector French and the Box Office Murders is certainly not a work that stands out if compared to other novels in the series.