The Rogues' Syndicate: The Maelstrom (Detective Club Crime Classics)

Description

This exciting thriller by the late Frank Froest, himself a detective of international fame, will satisfy the most exacting of detective story connoisseurs. Against a familiar London background we have here a tale of breath-taking adventure - knifing, arson, racing-taxicabs, and shooting-to-kill. Lost in a London fog, young Jimmie Hallett is accosted by a frightened woman who hands him a package and flees. Within hours, he is being questioned about the murder of the girl's father and a dangerous international conspiracy. Can genial detective Weir Menzies, even with all the resources of Scotland Yard behind him, succeed in outwitting a faceless gang of organised thieves and killers? Frank Froest, the highly decorated Superintendent of Scotland Yard's C.I.D., began his retirement from the Metropolitan Police by writing The Grell Mystery, acclaimed as the first crime novel to incorporate authentic police procedures. With George Dilnot, co-author of the story collection The Crime Club, Froest wrote one more novel, the ambitious and thrilling The Rogues' Syndicate, published in 1916 and also released as a silent movie, Millionaire Hallet's Adventure. The book was republished in April 1930 by the Detective Story Club, but was inadvertently sourced from an abridged, Americanised version called The Maelstrom. This Detective Club classic restores the full text of the British first edition, and includes an introduction by the Detective Story Club's original series editor, F. T. Smith. (This book is COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, despite what some retailers have put in their listings.)

Frank Castle Froest was born in the West of England around 1858, and he joined the Metropolitan Police in 1879. On his retirement, Frank Froest and his wife Sarah moved to Axbridge in Somerset, where he became a justice of the peace. Working with the journalist George Dilnot, he wrote The Grell Mystery and in return he helped Dilnot with his history of the Metropolitan Police, The Story of Scotland Yard (1915). Together they co-authored two further works of fiction: The Crime Club (1915) and The Rogues' Syndicate (1916). After his wife died in 1916, Frank Froest lost his appetite for writing about crime. He moved into politics instead and was elected to Somerset County Council. He died in 1930 in a convalescent home at Weston-super-Mare.

'A police "procedural" from 1916. Loved the jargon - kind of a tough 1930's gangster, British style. Loved the story ... Another fun read from a completely different time.' GoodReads