Sir John Magill's Last Journey (An Inspector French Case)
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1930. 2nd Printing. Hard Cover. Very Good / Good. Item #2308855
2nd printing. Includes scarce jacket (appears to be a later state - no price on front flap). Jacket edges rubbed with a few small closed tears and minimal loss from top fore edge corner.
288 pp. Violet cloth with maroon titles. Part of Harper's Sealed Mystery series, which offered readers the opportunity to return the book for a refund if they did not break the seal containing the conclusion of the novel. The gimmick appears to have been employed primarily with well-written stories, as copies of these with the seal intact are very difficult to find. The sixth Inspector French novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, once dubbed 'The King of Detective Story Writers.' Crofts was trained as a railway engineer, and a number of his novels incorporate this knowledge. He was also known for the intricacies of his plots, and contemporary authors (whose careers are now collectively referred to as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction) respected his writing: Agatha Christie included parodies of Inspector French alongside Sherlock Holmes and her own Hercule Poirot in Partners in Crime (1929), and Raymond Chandler reviewed his writing favorably in The Simple Art of Murder. This novel is billed as 'the murder mystery without a clue.' "When Sir John Magill, the wealthy Irish industrialist, fails to show up at his home town on a well-publicised 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..."
Price: $350.00