Freeman Wills Croft

 Freeman Wills Crofts Inspector French books are classic Golden Age police procedural mysteries, following Scotland Yard detective Inspector French's investigative process step by step through each case.  

Inspector French's Greatest Case involves the robbery of a diamond merchant's safe of gems and cash and the murder of an elderly clerk.  The hunt for clues leads Inspector French to Amsterdam, Switzerland and Spain, but the case becomes increasingly frustrating as each clue seems to lead to nothing further.  As a railway engineer, Crofts uses many instances where railway timetables feature, and this case certainly illustrates that.  Grade:  B.  

In The Cheyne Mystery, Maxwell Cheyne meets a stranger at a country hotel, has dinner and a drink with him, and awakens hours later to find that the man has drugged him, searched his pockets and also burgled his house, but has stolen nothing in either case.  Further encounters with the stranger and his gang culminate in their attempt to kill him, and he heads for Scotland Yard, where the case is given to Inspector French.  French and Cheyne work on solving the puzzle of the document the gang has been pursuing, with the chase leading French first to Belgium and then to the open seas.  Grade:  B.

Although the Crime At Guildford is not officially his case, the murder of a member of a prominent firm of jewelers appears to  Chief Inspector French to be connected to the robbery of an enormous amount of gems from the firm's safe in London that same weekend, and he works closely with the police at Guildford to solve both cases.  Pursuit of the solution leads him and his team to France, Brussels and Amsterdam before it's over.  Grade:  B.  

I have two more of Croft's Inspector French books, A Losing Game and Death of a Train, but didn't finish them.   I just got tired of reading the plodding style.  The first book deals with the  murder of a blackmailing moneylender and the second is a WWII spy thriller, but I just got tired of them both.  Grade: C.  

So that's it for the authors whose names begin with C.