The Pit-Prop Syndicate
Freeman Wills Crofts blends mystery with adventure in this 1922 novel, which begins with a small oddity that refuses to sit still in the mind. On a business trip near Bordeaux, wine merchant Seymour Merriman watches a lorry belonging to a pit-prop firm quietly swap its number plates, and the more he and his friend Hilliard poke at the company that ships mining timber from France to England, the less innocent it looks. What starts as amateur snooping grows into a full criminal investigation, and Scotland Yard is eventually drawn in to expose what the syndicate is really moving. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.
About the Author
Freeman Wills Crofts (1879-1957) was an Irish-born railway engineer who began writing detective fiction while recovering from a long illness. A founding member of the Detection Club, he became a mainstay of the Golden Age and is best remembered for the methodical Inspector French.
See all books by Freeman Wills Crofts →
