The Pit-Prop Syndicate is a story from the beginning of the golden age of crime fiction. Seymour Merriman, a British wine merchant on business in France, happens upon a syndicate manufacturing pit-props-beams used to prop up mine tunnels-but his eye is caught by one odd detail: their lorry's number plate mysteriously changes. With the help of his friend Hilliard from the Excise department they dig deeper and uncover a dangerous conspiracy.
Freeman Wills Crofts was a civil engineer, turned author of crime fiction. Though somewhat forgotten today, his style was widely appreciated at the time, and still finds fans of those who like a puzzle where all the loose ends are tied up. During his career he wrote over thirty crime novels; The Pit-Prop Syndicate, published in 1922, was his third.
A mysteriously changing number plate is all it takes to pull an ordinary businessman into a smuggling ring with international reach - an early, atmospheric outing from one of the genre's most exacting puzzle-makers, where every clue is laid fairly before the reader.
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