Cronies with Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, author Freeman Wills Crofts (1879-1957) was much acclaimed for his meticulously plotted detective novels during the Golden Age of British crime fiction. In The Hog's Back Mystery, first published in 1933, Crofts presents the reader with a deliciously complicated puzzle. Two female friends, visiting an old school chum in the Surrey countryside of England, are baffled when their host, the doctor husband of their friend, disappears without a trace. Inspector French is called in to investigate the curious caper, and soon one of the women winds up missing as well. The reader follows the investigation along with French, as clues point to extramarital affairs, professional misconduct, and criminal cover-ups. French, of course, eventually sorts through all the false leads and red herrings, and presents all the evidence to support his conclusions in the last chapter - with page-number references for those of us who failed to solve the case on our own. What fun for classic mystery fans and armchair sleuths!