Loss of the Jane Vosper

Rating:
Summary: Loss of Reader's Interest
Review: Crofts all too treacherously arouses the reader's expectations with a dramatic opening depicting the sinking of a ship at sea, no lives lost. The growing certainty that the ship was sabotaged for the insurance and the disappearance of a private detective bring in French, who is at his most plodding and pedantic; indeed, the early sections of the investigation are among the dullest we have yet encountered from this reader. The plot is equally dull: the question of identity is irrelevant and hence anti-climactic, while the reader should be able to solve the how question halfway through. Bah.

Rating:
Summary: Loss of Reader's Interest
Review: Crofts all too treacherously arouses the reader's expectations with a dramatic opening depicting the sinking of a ship at sea, no lives lost. The growing certainty that the ship was sabotaged for the insurance and the disappearance of a private detective bring in French, who is at his most plodding and pedantic; indeed, the early sections of the investigation are among the dullest we have yet encountered from this reader. The plot is equally dull: the question of identity is irrelevant and hence anti-climactic, while the reader should be able to solve the how question halfway through. Bah.

Rating:
Summary: Sinks to the bottom.
Review: I have seen this book reissued in a series comprising the best detective fiction of all time, its editor and selector nominating and praising its special features. It certainly has a prize winning first chapter. In the pages of "Moby Dick" or the novels of Joseph Conrad, you won't find a better description of a captain's predicament before he gives the order to abandon ship in mid ocean. Found at their best here are Crofts' knowledge of ships and his talent for narrating old-fashioned adventure yarns. Once the Jane Vosper sinks, however, so does the book's quality. An investigation into the cause of the sinking becomes allied to an investigation into the disappearance of the man delegated to do the investigating. When Inspector French takes up the investigations, your interest might revive; grammatical errors and signs of inadequate proof reading, however, won't help to maintain it.

Having over the years read and reviewed all of Croft's novels, I urge those who like to sample old-fashioned mystery yarns to try his "Starvel Tragedy" or "Fatal Venture".