A review by tombomp
The Hog's Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts

4.0

Rating is purely on its merits as a mystery story - the character writing isn't deep or anything, there's no fascinating insight into human nature, it's not humorous etc. BUT as a mystery it's really solid - lots of clever misdirection, a long walk to the point when you get to see the big picture of what's going on but nothing at all held back (if you're clever you could work out things quite a bit before the denouement I think), well paced so the interest is constantly kept up, a wide pool of believable suspects. In the denouement he's very specific about what exactly happened and also gives the page numbers of the clues used to build the case. Admittedly you could pick holes in it a bit but it satisfied me. I'd have liked a little bit more of an epilogue but ah well. The mystery as a whole is really satisfying and clever without ever really breaching suspension of disbelief or being too complicated to keep track of (although there's definitely a good amount of trickery involved, it's the totally fair kind). You'll only like it if you like the mystery aspect a lot BUT if you do it's a pretty neat story, imo. Not being specific about stuff because the interest is all in the mystery and I don't want to spoil it at all, heh.