Image for The pit-prop syndicate

The pit-prop syndicate

Wills Crofts, FreemanCurran, John(Introduction by)
Part of the Detective Club Crime Classics series
See all formats and editions

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the third standalone novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, dubbed ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’. Seymour Merriman’s holiday in France comes to an abrupt halt when his motorcycle starts leaking petrol.

Following a lorry to find fuel, he discovers that it belongs to an English company making timber pit-props for coal mines back home.

His suspicions of illegal activity are aroused when he sees the exact same lorry with a different number plate – and confirmed later with the shocking discovery of a body.

What began as amateur detective work ends up as a job for Inspector Willis of Scotland Yard, a job requiring tenacity, ingenuity and guile . . . Freeman Wills Crofts’ transition from civil engineer on the Irish railways to world-renowned master of the detective mystery began with The Cask when he was fully 40 years old; but it was his third novel, the baffling The Pit-Prop Syndicate, that was singled out by his editors in 1930 as the first for inclusion in Collins’ prestigious new series of reprints ‘for crime connoisseurs’. This Detective Club classic is introduced by John Curran, author of The Hooded Gunman, and includes the bonus of an exclusive short story by Crofts, ‘Danger in Shroude Valley’.

Read More
Available
£6.74 Save 25.00%
RRP £8.99
Add Line Customisation
1 in stock Need More ?
Add to List
Product Details
Collins Crime Club
0008333963 / 9780008333966
Paperback / softback
823.912
05/03/2020
United Kingdom
English
Modern crime
320 pages
20 cm