''The Cask'' is a 1920

detective novel Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as s ...

by the Irish-born writer

Freeman Wills Crofts Freeman Wills Crofts FRSA (1 June 1879 – 11 April 1957) was an Irish mystery author, best remembered for the character of Inspector Joseph French. A railway engineer by training, Crofts introduced railway themes into many of his stories, ...

. His debut novel, it is considered his masterpiece. Long after the author's reputation had declined, this book was still hailed by critics as a cornerstone of the genre Evans p.148 Crofts had been working as a

railway engineer Railway engineering is a multi-faceted engineering discipline dealing with the design, construction and operation of all types of rail transport systems. It encompasses a wide range of engineering disciplines, including civil engineering, compu ...

before writing the novel, but its success launched him as one of the leading writers of the

Golden Age of Detective Fiction The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels of similar patterns and styles, predominantly in the 1920s and 1930s. The Golden Age proper is, in practice, usually taken to refer to a type of fiction which was pre ...

. He later went on to create the character of Inspector French of Scotland Yard who appeared in a long-running series of novels.

References

Bibliography

* Evans, Curtis. ''Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961''. McFarland, 2014. * Herbert, Rosemary. ''Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing''. Oxford University Press, 2003. * Reilly, John M. ''Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers''. Springer, 2015. 1920 British novels Novels by Freeman Wills Crofts British crime novels British mystery novels British detective novels William Collins, Sons books Novels set in London 1920 debut novels {{1920s-mystery-novel-stub