Inspector French

A late-night murder of a diamond merchant's veteran employee in London's Hatton Gardens has Scotland Yard calling on Inspector French to investigate. When French gets there he finds not only the victim but missing diamonds and money from an open safe. There are meager clues as the Inspector follows a trail to mainland Europe and back. There are many false clues and several suspects with much of the searching leading to nothing but dead ends. We can listen as French sorts it all out, finding the missing diamonds and nabbing the murderer.

In Inspector French's Greatest Case, listeners are introduced for the first time to the now-famous inspector. It begins with the discovery of the head clerk's corpse beside the rifled safe of a Hatton Garden diamond merchant. Suspicion falls on various people, for the crime is the work of a master-criminal; and many intricate mysteries have to be unraveled and many false clues followed to their unsatisfactory conclusions before French is finally able to bring the guilty to justice.

When young Cheyne finds things going wrong and a dangerous gang of criminals unpleasantly interested in him, he tries to outwit them on his own. When things get serious and his life attempted, he goes to Scotland Yard. French comes into the case, and carries out one of his usual investigations of untiring thoroughness directed by flashes of inspiration.

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the third Inspector French novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, once dubbed ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’. THREE CORPSES FOR INSPECTOR FRENCH A chance invitation from friends saves Ruth Averill’s life on the night her uncle’s old house in Starvel Hollow is consumed by fire, killing him and incinerating the fortune he kept in cash. Dismissed at the inquest as a tragic accident, the case is closed – until Scotland Yard is alerted to the circulation of bank-notes supposedly destroyed in the inferno. Inspector Joseph French suspects that dark deeds were done in the Hollow that night and begins to uncover a brutal crime involving arson, murder and body snatching...

Inspector French is called to solve the mystery of a chest that washed ashore with a dead man inside.

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the fifth Inspector French novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, once dubbed 'The King of Detective Story Writers'. The Puzzle of the Purple Sickle. The suicide of a sales clerk at the box office of a London cinema leaves another girl in fear for her life. Persuaded to seek help from Scotland Yard, Miss Darke confides in Inspector Joseph French about a gambling scam by a mysterious trio of crooks and that she believes her friend was murdered. When the girl fails to turn up the next day, and the police later find her body, French's inquiries reveal that similar girls have also been murdered, all linked by their jobs and by a sinister stranger with a purple scar...

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the sixth Inspector French novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, once dubbed 'The King of Detective Story Writers'. A murder mystery without a clue. When Sir John Magill, the wealthy Irish industrialist, fails to show up at his home town on a well-publicized visit, neither his family nor the Belfast police can explain his disappearance. Foul play is suspected when his bloodstained hat is discovered, and Scotland Yard is called in. With his characteristic genius for reconstruction, Inspector French evolves a gruesome theory about what happened to the elderly man, but his reputation – and that of Scotland Yard – will depend on finding out who was responsible . . .