Freeman Wills Crofts was born in Dublin and worked in railway engineering. He wrote detective fiction in his spare time until his move to England. Thereafter he wrote full time. To his plots he brought a mind trained in mathematics, specialising in the seemingly unbreakable alibi and transport timetables. His best-known character is Inspector Joseph French. French achieves his results through dogged persistence. Raymond Chandler praised Crofts' plots, calling him 'the soundest builder of them all'.