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The crime for Detective Chief Inspector French to investigate in this novel is sabotage. In July 1942 the British Prime Minister announces to his War Cabinet that he has received the most urgent request for vital supplies of radar valves from the Commander-in-Chief of the North African Campaign and from the O. C. Home Forces. Existing stocks, however, are sufficient to meet only one of the requests. It is essential that the enemy should be prevented from knowing how short is the supply of these vital stocks, which request will be met, and how the stocks will be transported.
So is created the Train, whose birth, life, and death are brilliantly depicted in the first half of the novel. Less impressive is the second half of the book, in which French adopts various detecting methods, inspired by fictional detectives of earlier generations such as Dr Thorndyke and Sherlock Holmes, to identify and apprehend the Train's killers.
This is one of Crofts' most ambitious books. The plotting and planning, as well as the first hand knowledge of steam locomotives, reflect his thirty years as a railway engineer. The list of characters ranges from the British prime minister to the lady who cleans "the moving parts, the mass of rods slung outside the wheels at each side of the framing, the spring links, couplings, axle-boxes and such like".
There are at least two unconvincing actions in the narrative. A young female witness too readily agrees to be taken by strangers to observe and identify a suspect. French does not hesitate to gain the support of a medico by "letting him in on the secret", when, for all he knows, the medico might be one of the enemy.
Quaint, engrossing, perhaps slightly flawed, this is one of Crofts' finest tributes to the romance of steam locomotives.
The crime for Chief Detective Inspector French to investigate in this novel is sabotage. In July 1942 the British Prime Minister announces to his War Cabinet that he has received the most urgent request for vital supplies of radar valves from the Commander-in-Chief of the North African Campaign and from the O. C. Home Forces. Existing stocks, however, are sufficient to meet only one of the requests. It is essential that the enemy should be prevented from knowing how short is the supply of these vital stocks, which request will be met, and how the stocks will be transported.
So is created the Train, whose birth, life, and death are brilliantly depicted in the first half of the novel. Less impressive is the second half of the book, in which French adopts various detecting methods, inspired by fictional detectives of earlier generations such as Dr Thorndyke and Sherlock Holmes, to identify and apprehend the Train's killers.
This is one of Crofts' most ambitious books. The plotting and planning, as well as the first hand knowledge of steam locomotives, reflect his thirty years as a railway engineer. The list of characters ranges from the British prime minister to the lady who cleans "the moving parts, the mass of rods slung outside the wheels at each side of the framing, the spring links, couplings, axle-boxes and such like".
There are at least two unconvincing actions in the narrative. A young female witness too readily agrees to be taken by strangers to observe and identify a suspect. French does not hesitate to gain the support of a medico by "letting him in on the secret", when, for all he knows, the medico might be one of the enemy.
Quaint, engrossing, perhaps slightly flawed, this is one of Crofts' finest tributes to the romance of steam locomotives.
