This is a short British police procedural crime novel written and set in the mid 1930's. A young diplomat at the British Embassy in Paris dies in suspicious circumstances. The Ambassador fears the French press will turn the incident into a political scandal. He asks Scotland Yard to send detectives to Paris to "assist" the French police. Inspector Richardson and his sergeant Cooper are on the next boat train to France.
It's a cleverly plotted story, although I found it a tedious read at times due to a wordy writing style, that often turned pompous. Ignoring this distraction, the underlying story is good with several interesting characters to occupy the detectives' time. There's some amusing red herrings, like the mysterious set of photos of zoo animals.
The French police and press are ridiculed throughout the book. It's difficult to say whether this was intentional or just a casual demonstration of the then current British attitude towards France. The English police constantly contrast French police methods with those of their own, which are of course the superior ones.
I found Detective Sergeant Cooper's role more interesting than Inspector Richardson. Cooper went undercover posing as a wealthy French Canadian (someone from the "French colony in Quebec") with the need to dress extravagantly and speak French like it was spoken in the 18th Century. (An unexplained casual knock against French Canadians?). The French inspector Bigot is portrayed as an ambitious buffoon, who is supported admirably by Charles Verneuil, a former naval officer turned detective. Verneuil and the Scotland Yard detectives make a great team. The characters that inhabit the British Embassy represent the dandies of the Foreign Office to good effect.
There's an Introduction to the book written by Martin Edwards which is a helpful piece of background to both the author and the story.
In the final analysis, this is an enjoyable police procedural from the Golden Age of crime fiction that is well worth wading through its wordiness. ( )