The Sea Mystery
Freeman Wills Crofts was born in Dublin in 1879 and died in 1957.  He worked for a Northern Irish railway company as an engineer until 1929, before turning to detective fiction His plots reveal his mathematical training and he specialised in the seemingly unbreakable alibi, laying layer upon layer within his stories.   He loved ships and trains and the intricacies of transport timetables feature in many of his stories. Crofts’ best-known character is Inspector Joseph French.  French appears for the first time in Inspector French’s Greatest Case.  He is a detective who achieves his results through dogged persistence.