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Book Review: SMALLBONE DECEASED (1950) by Michael Gilbert

6/21/2020

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The most celebrated of Michael Gilbert's mysteries, and deservedly so, 1950's Smallbone Deceased offers a wonderful ant's-nest look into a firm of solicitors who find an unwanted corpse among the office paperwork. Specifically, the body of Marcus Smallbone is discovered stuffed into an air-tight deed box, and it is left to Inspector Hazlerigg to determine not only who killed and hid the trustee but also when the murder took place. Fortunately, the Inspector has an ally on the inside: Henry Bohun, a newly hired lawyer with enough autonomy and intelligence to follow his own paths of investigation. It is an effective pairing, a nice balance of official policing and amateur sleuthing with both figures thoughtful and intuitive; it creates a respectful equality that doesn't usually occur in the pages of mystery fiction, where the amateur so often shows the professional the error of his ways. 

Featured in his fun genre overview The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, GAD historian Martin Edwards writes that Smallbone Deceased is "packed with incidental pleasures," and I completely agree. There is much to enjoy in this well-plotted story, and Gilbert proves to be very adept at wry characterization. Told through an understatedly humorous third-person narration, the author sketches his cast of partners and secretaries with singular and observant details. We meet the rotund, approachable Mr. Craine; the petty, dyspeptic and insecure Mr. Birley; Mr. Horniman Junior, reluctantly assuming the mantle he inherited from his beloved father, Mr. Horniman Senior; pleased-with-himself office wit John Cove; and the four secretaries, Misses Bellbas, Cornel, Mildmay, and Chittering, each with their respective strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, the underpinning psychology of these characters feels truthful – part of what an actor would call his or her character's "given circumstances" – from Bob Horniman's antipathy to follow in his father's celebrated footsteps to one lonely secretary's dalliance with an office employee.

The mystery at heart is a good one, smartly clued and one that becomes more immediate and intricate when a second after-hours murder occurs. There are only two minor points that briefly pulled me out of the story. (Do note that neither point detracts too much from an otherwise highly satisfying reading experience.)


First, for a tale that builds its world so realistically, the set-piece of the novel is an office deed box so large that a small adult body can be contorted and pushed inside. It is also, we are told, one that can be hermetically sealed. I don't doubt that Michael Gilbert, a solicitor himself, knows whereof he writes, but surely an office box of that size (and one that a secretary at one point is said to move and use as a stepladder) would resemble at best a small trunk or, if elongated with multiples stacked upright, the drawers of a morgue. That's a lot of space for a lone client's paperwork storage. Still, as the vaudevillians have said and as I have written before regarding implausible details in mystery fiction: you buy the premise, you buy the bit.
The second niggling detail only arrives at the mystery's solution. While Barzun and Taylor, in their Catalogue of Crime, praise the "two splendid murders" and assert that "the motives are good," I would humbly submit that one motive is good – with a hiding-in-plain-sight clue that is quite masterful – while the other came as a surprise, almost to the point of being an explanatory afterthought. It invited me to return to what I knew about that character (in a story that handles character psychology so efficiently and successfully) to see if I might have arrived at the motive before it was stated. And the verdict was… kind of, but not really. It presumes a rationale for murder where one generally wouldn't be, and Gilbert seems to be aware of this: he even has his amateur detective Henry Bohun state that "the real reason, the inner reason for [the crime] I don't suppose we shall ever know."

If you have not yet read Smallbone Deceased, don't let my magnification of the sole two sticking points (for me) deter you from sampling a wonderful workplace mystery. Characterization, tone, and plot support one another to create an excellent reading experience. And if you want a second, third, or fourth opinion, you need only look to my colleagues for their reactions: visit Tracy at Bitter Tea and Mystery, J.F. Norris at Pretty Sinister Books, Les at Classic Mysteries, Kate at crossexaminingcrime, Nick Fuller at The Grandest Game in the World, and Martin Edwards' Crime Writing Blog.

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Book Review: VINTAGE CRIME (2020) edited by Martin Edwards

6/15/2020

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The new Crime Writers' Association anthology Vintage Crime presents its contents more or less chronologically in order of publication, inviting the reader to look for topical and stylistic patterns as the stories and their authors push through the decades. In his introduction, editor Martin Edwards explains that the collection starts with the Association's founding in 1953 and continues into the early 21st century, "demonstrat[ing] the evolution of the crime short story during the CWA's existence." Upon finishing the anthology and reflecting on exactly what evolution I had witnessed, I suspect there were simply not enough species under the microscope to make any conclusive Darwinian assessments, even with the generous 22 stories featured here.

There is ample evidence to make some unsurprising genre generalizations, though. Once past the Second World War and into the 1950s, writer and reader appetites for clever Golden Age detective puzzles, once voracious, were on the wane. The earliest published story in Vintage Crime, and not coincidentally the one that reflects the foot most firmly on GAD ground, is "Footprint in the Sky" by John Dickson Carr. Another early story, Michael Gilbert's "Money is Honey" also features some old-school clueing, but after the first four entries, there's less interest in the body in the library than the body in the bed, and how the ensuing jealousy or spurning of a lover or spouse will lead to murder or death.

As such, the most elemental change to track in the field of crime fiction as represented by the tales is the transition from the mystery puzzle to the psychological crime story. Whether this change is a welcome or unwanted one depends on the reader, of course. But it is no accident that Story Number Five, "The Woman Who Had Everything" by Celia Fremlin, is all about Getting Inside the Protagonist's Noggin. Quoth the Fremlin:

"He never thought about anything else any more, at home or away: a far cry from those golden holidays in the first years of their marriage, when he'd sit or lie beside her hour after hour, rubbing oil on her brown body, murmuring into her ear nonsense to make her laugh or endearments to make her glow – face down on the hot sand – with secret joy."
Will Maggie's suicide attempt finally bestir husband Rodney's love for her once more? (This is not a spoiler; this is the plot of the story.) Other pieces take a similar approach, such as "Turning Point" by Anthea Fraser, which evokes sympathy for a woman contemplating an affair as escape from a loveless marriage. There's nothing wrong with trying to align the reader emotionally with key characters; not doing so was a valid criticism of much classic mystery fiction, where suspects and detective were pushed around clinically like pieces on a chessboard. But when the crime aspect replaces the mystery aspect, then the writing succeeds or fails based on personal interest instead of puzzle ingenuity. And not every story in Vintage Crime felt satisfying, but here are the ones I (subjectively) single out as most memorable:

"The Nuggy Bar" by Simon Brett – fans of Brett's theater-set Charles Paris series already know of his dry wit and darkly comic view of life and death. Here we have a great satiric send-up involving a middle manager for a cleaning product company and his decision to plan a murder literally by the book – in this case, using a handbook of business precepts meant to shepherd the shaping and launch of a new product.

"The Hand That Feeds Me" by Michael Z. Lewin – a gimmick, but a good one whose brevity doesn't overstay its premise. A stray dog (who narrates) delivers an unconventional justice to avenge the death of a homeless stranger who was kind to him.

"Cold and Deep" by Frances Fyfield – puppies don't fare well at all, but this slow-but-smoldering tale sets up a confrontation between an earnest young woman and her sadistic in-law that builds to a satisfying, haunting climax.

"Interior, with Corpse" by Peter Lovesey – one of only a few post-1950 stories in the mix that gives a nod to sleuthing and detection, and the premise is delicious: a very detailed rendering of a crime scene shows up in an art gallery as part of a deceased painter's collection. The problem is that the picture's setting is recognizably the home of an esteemed retired fighter pilot and the dead woman looks eerily like someone who disappeared from the village decades ago.

And Martin Edwards provides "Melusine", an uncomfortably dystopian tale of a plague ravaging Britain's livestock. As the protagonist kills diseased sheep and cattle in countless numbers, he wonders just how close his wife and his drinking buddy have gotten in his absence.

Other honorable mentions: The H.R.F. Keating story "Inspector Ghote and the Noted British Author" follows his likeable Indian inspector as he contends with an irritating Western celebrity as a guest; "The Egyptian Garden" by Marjorie Eccles sketches a bittersweet friendship between a socialite living in Egypt and her young and bright servant; and Mick Herron provides a 21st-century character twist within "All She Wrote," a 2008 story that subverts expectations but feels more technical than immediate.

With such variety, it's a good bet that readers will find something, or a number of somethings, to like here. As the car commercials say, actual mileage may vary. Vintage Crime will be released in the U.S. on August 11 by Flame Tree Press. I received an advanced reading copy of this title via NetGalley in order to provide an honest review.
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Book Review: DEATH IN CAPTIVITY (1952) by Michael Gilbert

3/12/2020

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Michael Gilbert is in that group of celebrated classic crime authors whose names I have known for decades, but of whose books I have inexplicably not read more than one or two. (R. Austin Freeman, Michael Innes, Ellery Queen, and Margaret Millar also belong to that unjustly neglected group.) So when Reading the Detectives over at Goodreads chose as one of its March reads Death in Captivity, Gilbert's 1952 novel of murder occurring within a prisoner-of-war camp, I was grateful for the opportunity to be (re)introduced to the author and his straightforward style of storytelling.

Northern Italy, 1943: a camp holding Allied officers runs on routine, while in other parts of the world the war rages on. A mix of British, Scottish, and American military men cook, fraternize, play rugby, and even rehearse for a tongue-in-cheek production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Although the armed sentries and the Carabinieri largely leave their prisoners alone, the men also recognize that Fascist campo leader Captain Benucci could be a dangerous and deadly adversary if provoked. So it falls to Colonel Baird, acting in concert with the other imprisoned commanders and some hand-picked officers, to make sure that their plans for an escape tunnel beneath the large iron stove of Hut C are carried out quickly, quietly, and undetected.

But the project encounters one very messy obstacle: the body of Cyriakos Coutoulos, an unpopular soldier and suspected informant, is discovered at the tunnel's end, buried in sand from a structure collapse. Reluctant to bring the escape tunnel to their Italian captors' attention – but knowing that Coutoulos must be found soon and in similar circumstances to avoid complications – the dead man is secretly transferred to another hut where a second tunnel had been started and aborted. When Captain Benucci focuses his suspicions on Captain Roger Byfold as the killer, it falls to Henry "Cuckoo" Goyles to assume the role of amateur detective under very nontraditional circumstances.

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Part locked-room mystery, part wartime escape drama, Death in Captivity is a thoroughly enjoyable tale, nicely plotted and smartly paced. In his informative introduction to the British Library Crime Classics edition, author Martin Edwards reminds us that Michael Gilbert was himself a prisoner of war, and that the author dedicates this book to two fellow escapees with whom he traversed the Italian countryside towards the front line.

There are a number of surprises to be found in the story, not least of which is the unusual and unique setting for this murder mystery.


A captured officer camp surely holds amenities and carries a sense of laissez-faire not afforded to troop prisoners; it took me a few chapters to acclimate to the relative independence and limited supervision of our group of heroes. But that liberty is needed narratively for the men to execute long-term escape plans, and such afforded respect is in keeping with the uncertainty of the situation. The fortunes of war may change, and those in power will need to plead mercy before their one-time captives. It is also likely true-to-life, as the author had first-hand experience of the Italian camp at Fontanellato. 

My sole criticism is that the cast of characters has a largely physical and ideological sameness. Some officers are older, some younger, and nationalities and ranks differ, but they are cut from the same sober-minded, stiff-upper-lip cloth, and none really stand out as individual personalities. Still, the situation alone encourages more than enough sympathy for the prisoners' plight, and we find ourselves rooting for the mild but mindful Goyles to arrive at light at the end of the tunnel, both literally and figuratively, by finding freedom and solving the mystery. The officers may be allowed certain amenities, but their efforts to escape and survive are clearly a matter of life and death. 

Also published as The Danger Within, it looks like I come late to the review party! You can find astute critiques of Death in Captivity from TomCat at Beneath the Stains of Time, Tracy at Bitter Tea and Mystery, Sergio at Tipping My Fedora, Kate at crossexaminingcrime, and The Puzzle Doctor at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.

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