The Box Office Murders

One of Freeman Wills Crofts’s brisker Inspector French cases, this 1929 mystery begins when a frightened young cinema cashier walks into Scotland Yard convinced she will be the next to die. Several London box-office girls have already met suspicious ends, dismissed as accidents or suicides, and French comes to suspect an organized ring preying on women who handle cash. The trail leads him through a scheme run by cold professionals, and the danger closes in on the very witness who asked for his help. It moves faster than some of Crofts’s puzzle-heavy novels while keeping his trademark attention to method. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.