The Box Office Murders

We rely on your support to help us keep producing beautiful, free, and unrestricted editions of literature for the digital age. Will you support our efforts with a donation ? A young woman's body is hauled out of the English Channel by a passing yacht, and it matches the description of a woman named Thurza Darke given in a circular from Inspector French of Scotland Yard. Just the day before he'd been sitting alongside Thurza, listening to her story about the "suicide" of her friend. Thurza had been ensnared in a scam perpetrated by a man with a purple sickle-shaped birthmark on his wrist, and had realized that this was the same man her friend had mentioned shortly before her death. With two potentially linked murders on his hands, Inspector French is determined to stop any further bloodshed. The fifth in Freeman Wills Crofts' long-running Inspector French series, this novel sees French more stumped than usual with false leads taking him away from the scent, but it's difficult to keep the dogged detective confused for long. Freeman Wills Crofts (died 1957) was an influential writer of the modernist period. Their work has endured across generations and continues to be read and studied worldwide. As a work of classic literary fiction, The Box Office Murders exemplifies the narrative craft and social insight that defined great storytelling of its era. Literary fiction of this period was characterized by careful attention to character psychology, social milieu, and the moral questions that animated public discourse.