The Sea Mystery – Freeman Wills Crofts (1928)

I’ve been looking forward to the prospect of diving into Freeman Wills Crofts’ deep catalog for a few months now.  He’s been on my radar for a while, but was always slagged as a boring author – a writer of time-table mysteries that are heavy on detailed investigation.  After my experience with Ellery Queen’s early catalog, I wanted to avoid a monotonous trudge at all cost.  And then JJ at The Invisible Event wrote a rave review of The Sea Mystery, and since that time has been posting additional Crofts reviews that make the author sound like the second coming of….well, someone.

Now, JJ’s had just as excruciating a time with the early Ellery Queen novels as I have – in fact, he has yet to make it past The Dutch Shoe Mystery despite trying his hardest.  So if JJ is going to say that a supposedly humdrum author like Freeman Wills Crofts is worth diving into, I’m interested.  Since JJ’s initial post, I’ve read several other reviews of The Sea Mystery, all of which were very positive.