The 12.30 from Croydon

December 19, 2016
The title of this worthy golden age mystery from Crofts (1879–1957), originally published in 1934, refers to an early morning plane flight from Croydon, England, to Paris. When cantankerous retired businessman Andrew Crowther suddenly dies aboard the flight, the official verdict is suicide. Crowther’s ambitious nephew, Charles Swinburn, is relieved that his uncle’s inheritance will save him from ruin. Charles sets about keeping the family company afloat and winning the love of his life, Una. When evidence of foul play emerges, everyone with a link to Crowther becomes a suspect in his death. Unusually, most of the story is told in third person from the killer’s perspective. Even though readers know that the perpetrator should and must come to justice, they will find themselves eagerly anticipating his next devious move. The time spent following the rationalizations of the criminal’s mind makes up for the long-winded exposition in the final chapters of this British Library Crime classic.

November 1, 2016
Crofts (1897-1957), best known for breaking airtight alibis often involving English railroads, tries his hand at an inverted detective story whose killer is known from the beginning and never hops aboard a train.Charles Swinburn is by no means a bad man. He wouldn't dream of taking advantage of Una Mellor, the rather distant young lady he loves, or pinching from the till at Crowther Electromotor Works, the family firm he inherited from his late father years after his uncle retired. Now that he's been beaten for a contract he expected by a firm with more updated machinery, though, he'd love to purchase the equipment that would make the works more competitive. He fears that the worldwide Depression, still raging in 1933, will bankrupt him first. And he feels unhappily certain that Una will never marry a pauper. His only hope for more funds is Andrew Crowther, the wealthy uncle who was once his father's partner. But after Andrew twice resists his pleas for money, writing him a check for a mere 1,000 pounds, Charles, facing ruin, resolves to poison one of his uncle's digestive pills and claim the inheritance he expects. At first all goes well. Andrew obligingly dies in the opening chapter aboard a flight to France; Charles secures new financing on the strength of his financial prospects; and he's able to purchase that coveted machinery. Inevitably, however, problems arise. Una isn't nearly as buoyed by his prospects as he'd hoped; a blackmailer threatens his safety; and, worst of all, Scotland Yard sends Inspector Joseph French (Mystery in the Channel, 1931; reprinting in 2017) to look into the case. Can anyone doubt how all this will end? An old-fashioned but steadily absorbing account of a decent man's descent into corruption and murder. One of Crofts' best.

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Starred review from December 1, 2016
Crofts, a huge star during the Golden Age of British crime fiction, worked both sides of the shady street of villainy, writing both head-scratching whodunits, whose solutions depended on sorting through minuscule clues and tiny time discrepancies, and psychological crime novels, in which we're invited into the killer's mind before and after the murder. First published in 1934, this mystery starts with news of a mother's serious injury in Paris, necessitating a small band of relatives flying from the former Croydon Airport in South London to Paris. The woman's father, the enormously wealthy former head of a manufacturing firm, Andrew Crowther, travels with them and is discovered dead (from no apparent cause) shortly before landing. The novel then flashes back to four weeks previous to the death and into the point of view of Crowther's nephew, beset by financial difficulties, in love with a social-climbing woman. Crofts traces the nephew's plotting to murder his uncle from the first glimmer of an idea through all the machinations leading to the old man's death. The degree of suspense Crofts achieves by showing the growing obsession and planning is worthy of Hitchcock. Another first-rate reissue from the British Library Crime Classics series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)