Forgotten Book - The Night of the Twelfth

I borrowed Michael Gilbert's The Night of the Twelfth from the library not long after its publication, way back in 1976. I was very taken with the story, and struck by the fact that although the novel has many of Gilbert's trademark touches, the storyline is significantly darker than usual. In fact, when one looks at his colossal output as a whole, it's surely - in terms of the psychological cruelty at the heart of the novel - the darkest thing he ever wrote. Yet the violence is not graphically or exploitatively described. And rereading the book after more than forty years, I enjoyed it all over again.

The story involves an unusual blend of disparate elements. There is a prep school setting worthy of a Golden Age mystery, a thriller sub-plot rooted in the Israel-Palestine conflict, a sexually-charged motive for murder, and a teasing whodunit puzzle. Not to mention some crisply described police work. As ever, Gilbert delivers a great deal of value for the reader's investment of time.

Three adolescent boys have been tortured and killed. It becomes increasingly apparent that these terrible crimes have some kind of connection with the school, where a new teacher, the tough but enigmatic Kenneth Manifold, has just arrived. Among the pupils is the son of the Israeli ambassador, who is a target for terrorists. The members of the school staff are an eclectic bunch, including a gay teacher who is arranging a production of Twelfth Night. Gilbert himself taught briefly at a prep school after leaving university and his presentation of this strange, enclosed community is authentic if now, no doubt, somewhat dated.

A striking feature of the book, as with many of Gilbert's novels, is the rapid shift of viewpoints. This is a method that he favoured, no doubt as a means of injecting pace into his stories. Sometimes it can mean that his characters - who are invariably interesting - are not presented in quite as much depth as one would wish, but his economy of style masks the accomplishment of his craftmanship. He can sketch people memorably in just a few sentences. I don't think that the motivation of one key character - why did that person behave in the way they did? - is dealt with as fully as I'd have hoped, but overall I remain convinced that this is one of his best novels, and a fine example of his command of storytelling technique.

Forgotten Book - The Dust and the Heat, aka Overdrive

The Dust and the Heat by Michael Gilbert is a fascinating thriller - and yet it has hardly ever been discussed. I'm not sure why. I've now read it three times and each time I enjoy it more, and get a better handle on what Gilbert was trying to do in this unusual story. Like The Crack in the Teacup, it's quite close to mainstream fiction in some ways, but it's entertaining from start to finish.

In saying this, I realise that the story may not be to every taste. At one level, it's an account of a long-running corporate vendetta involving industrial espionage, that ends up in a civil court case. Gilbert's legal expertise is much in evidence - early in the story there is a sub-plot involving rights of way, something you don't find in Dick Francis, say, or Len Deighton - and it may be that my own legal interests bias me in favour of Gilbert's clever and original use of (relatively) recondite material.

But even if that is the case, there is much for any reader to savour here in the character study of a ruthless entrepreneur. Oliver Nugent proves to be a formidable and dangerous man of war, and equally menacing in peacetime when he's wearing a suit. At first, you may think that there is something heroic about him, but Gilbert is scrupulous in showing the dangers into which Nugent's single-minded win-at-all-costs philosophy leads him. My guess is that Gilbert was influenced in his portrayal by his own experience of business life, though I'm sure he was far too smart to base the character on a single recognisable individual.

The book begins with a postscript, and although the action is spread over years, the writing is taut and engaging. We don't learn enough, perhaps, about Nugent's German wife, despite her connection with a key character who lurks in the background throughout, but as usual with Gilbert, most of the minor characters are sketched with verve as well as economy. Again, as is common with Gilbert, the finale is rather low-key. This is a technique of his which used to puzzle me, but now I can see more merit in it. And there is plenty of action, though he doesn't dwell on the various acts of violence.

There is quite a bit in the story about advertising, with nice satire of competive advertising. One thing is for sure: Gilbert was deeply, deeply sceptical about advertising. When, later in his life, I got to know him, he wrote engagingly to me on this subject; because I was a lawyer of a younger generation, who always believed that it was inevitable and right in the modern era that solicitors would be allowed to advertise, I didn't share his views, but there was undoubtedly some force in his reservations. He was a wise man as well as a very good writer.

Forgotten Book - Heads You Lose

I have a vivid recollection of my first encounter with Christianna Brand's Heads You Lose. As a fourteen year old schoolboy, I raced to the local library one Saturday morning in September and borrowed it (in a reprint edition introduced by Michael Gilbert) before nipping back home and settling down to watch my favourite cricket team play their first cup final on television. Alas, my heroes were thrashed, and I was in a very grumpy mood for the rest of that weekend.

My humour wasn't improved by the fact that I felt Brand's novel didn't play fair with me as a reader. I'd greatly admired Green for Danger, but I felt that this village mystery was a let-down. I'm afraid that I'll forever associate it with a day when my juvenile dreams were dashed! However, I was encouraged to give it another go by a thought-provoking discussion of the story in Samantha Walton's Guilty but Insane, which deals with the treatment of psychological disturbance in Golden Age fiction.

On a second reading, my revised conclusion is that the book is a curate's egg. Brand skates over thin ice more cleverly than I appreciated in my youth. There's a pleasing false solution, but this was only her second novel, and it's well short of her best. It introduced her main character Inspector Cockrill, aka "Cockie", but I must admit I've never found him quite as engaging as do some fans. The book was published in 1942, and one of the characters, who is Jewish, is presented in sympathetic fashion - yet he still has to put up with a good deal of casual antisemitism before the story reaches its end.

On the plus side, there's a nice map and a neatly contrived "closed circle" of suspects. Samantha Walton's discussion has given me greater insight into Brand's handling of homicidal psychology, and is an uncommon example of an academic study which actually enhances the pleasure of reading Golden Age fiction. I still don't think Heads You Lose is really a fair play mystery, but I also think I judged it too harshly on first reading. As for that cricket match, well the scars run deep, but back then, I never dreamed that one day I'd become friendly with my team's opening batsman, Peter Gibbs, and that we'd go to a Society of Authors meeting together. Peter told me that they just froze on the big occasion. Oh well, even heroes are human...

Forgotten Book - After the Fine Weather

Michael Gilbert used to tease his fellow detective novelists by saying that it was harder to write thrillers than it is to write detective novels. He was unusual in that he was equally accomplished whether writing classic whodunits or stories of action and adventure (or, come to that, police procedurals or spy stories). After the Fine Weather was published in 1963, four years after his previous novel, which was a London-based police story, Blood and Judgement. This book could hardly be more different from its predecessor.

The setting is Lienz, a tiny Austrian province on the border of South Tyrol. After an introductory chapter which follows the release from prison of a brutish chap called Albin Boschetto, Gilbert switches focus, as we meet twenty-year-old Laura, who is in Rome, and about to travel to Lienz to meet her brother Charles, who is a diplomat.

One of the interesting features about this story, which I think was unusual at the time it was written, is that it's an action thriller with a strong and likeable female protagonist. Laura is a good character, and Gilbert's presentation of her is appealing. Before long, she witnesses an assassination, and although the local authorities have picked their own scapegoat for the killing, she insists that someone else was responsible. The tension mounts from there.

Like all Gilbert's novels, this one is written with great assurance. One of the quaint features is the absence of communications when Lienz is cut off from the rest of Austria by snow. No internet, no mobile phones, nothing like that. The sense of people being dependent on their own personal resources is strong in this story, and it makes for an entertaining read. When I first read it, as a teenager, I was slightly underwhelmed. Belatedly, I've revised my opinion. It's a pity that Laura never returned.

Michael Gilbert's The Empty House and The Thriller Theory

As a committed Michael Gilbert fan, I hurried to borrow The Empty House from the library not long after it was published back in 1978. It was one of his thrillers rather than a police procedural or detective novel and I thought it was rather less memorable than much of his work, though I did rather like the evocative image (at the end of the book) that gives rise to the title.

Having managed to acquire a nice signed copy at long last, I decided it was time to try it again. I'd completely forgotten the story - other than that final scene. And once again I'm afraid I was slightly underwhelmed. What interests me is - why? This is a book written in Gilbert's characteristically lean style, with no wasted words. There are loads of fascinating ingredients. A missing person, who may or may not be dead, a likeable hero (one of the very few loss adjusters in crime fiction, young Peter Manciple), a glamorous femme fatale who is responsible for Peter's sexual initiation, biological warfare, spies, soldiers, action, a good Exmoor setting, a dodgy archaeologist, an apparent suicide, an enigmatic solicitor, a clue concerning property law - yes, you name it, this book has it.

Gilbert famously said that thriller writing is more difficult than writing a detective story. And he did write some very good thrillers. He was sometimes criticised for not focusing more on characterisation, but Peter Manciple is a very well-drawn individual. No, the problem lies elsewhere and concerns the story. Packed with incident though it is, I didn't really care enough about what was going to happen.

Maybe there are just too many ingredients in this book. The deaths of various minor characters don't register as much as they should do, because they are handled in such a matter-of-fact way that the emotional impact is negligible. I felt Gilbert could have made a lot more of them. Even the big plot twist at the end was one I didn't care as much about as I should have done.

Yet Peter's fate did matter to me as a reader, and that's why I remember the scene in the empty house, not all the supposedly more exciting stuff. Because Michael Gilbert was a supremely professional writer with a flair for thrillers (one reviewer, often quoted on his books, said he "understands the thriller theory to perfection") and he was never less than competent. The Empty House is decent entertainment but it still feels to me like a book which isn't quite the sum of its many parts.

Top Ten Escapist Crime Reads

As promised yesterday, here are ten escapist crime reads. I call it a "top ten" but my inner lawyer advises me to include, well, if not a disclaimer then at least a note of explanation! I've opted for books that are British (I may do more top tens with other criteria, for instance American books, if this little list finds favour), and easy to obtain, here if not everywhere. So I've excluded some great stories that are harder to find, such as Henry Wade's Heir Presumptive and Robert Player's The Ingenious Mr Stone. I've limited myself to one book per author (sorry, Agatha) and I've tried to inject some variety, so that these are not exclusively Golden Age stories or novels inspired by the Golden Age.

With that in mind, here goes:

Agatha Christie - Why Didn't They Ask Evans? a light-hearted mystery with a clever clue in the title and a likeable pair of amateur detectives.

Anthony Berkeley - The Poisoned Chocolates Case - a cerebral whodunit with six solutions, which must represent good value. Christianna Brand (whose own books make excellent escapist reading) and I both had the temerity at different times to come up with additional solutions, which can be found in the British Library reprint.

Dorothy L. Sayers - Murder Must Advertise - never mind the dodgy sub-plot, the main story is enjoyable, the advertising world wonderfully well evoked, and there's even a cricket match...

Michael Gilbert - Death Has Deep Roots - a consistently lively blend of courtroom drama and thriller, this is one of the best books of a writer I have always admired.

Donald Henderson - A Voice Like Velvet - a BBC radio announcer as a cat burglar! A great premise and good story from a very talented writer whose life and career were sadly cut short.

Cyril Hare- An English Murder - this Christmas mystery features an engaging sleuth in Dr Bottwink and a classic closed-circle setting.

Pamela Branch - The Wooden Overcoat - Branch was one of the most amusing crime writers of the 1950s, matched only by the excellent Colin Watson, and it's a shame that she only published a handful of books. This is probably the best of them.

Peter Lovesey - The False Inspector Dew - Peter's award-winning slant on the Crippen is characteristic of his entertaining and imaginative work. I've limited myself to just one living writer, which means no place for Simon Brett, Ruth Dudley Edwards, or L.C. Tyler, but all of them are splendid entertainers too.

Sarah Caudwell - Thus Was Adonis Murdered - the mannered style will take some readers a bit of getting used to, but once you're in the swing, reading about the exploits of Chancery barristers is, surprise, surprise, enormously pleasurable.

Robert Barnard - A Scandal in Belgravia - Robert was a gifted maker of mischief in life and in his fiction. There's a lot of fun to be had in novels like Sheer Torture but the brilliant finale of Scandal makes it my favourite of his books.

Forgotten Book - They Never Looked Inside

They Never Looked Inside (US title - He Didn't Mind Danger) was Michael Gilbert's second novel, and it was originally published in 1948. It represents a major departure from the setting and style of his debut, Close Quarters, even though it again features Inspector Hazlerigg, who thus became the first of Gilbert's long list of series detectives. Whereas the first novel was a whodunit in the classic style, the second is an action thriller about a criminal gang.

The contrast between the two books is explained by the fact that Gilbert started work on the first before war broke out, although it was only published in peacetime. The second bears witness - as do many of its successors, such as Death in Captivity and Death Has Deep Roots - to Gilbert's wartime experience. The plot and many of the characters are derived from the experience of the Second World War, and despite Hazlerigg's presence in the story, the most intriguing character is the recently demobbed Major Angus McCann, who acts as an amateur sleuth, and whose intrepid nature gave the book its American title. (To explain the curious British title would require a plot spoiler, I'm afraid.)

The book opens with a robbery that goes wrong, and it soon emerges that this is one in a long sequence of crimes with which Scotland Yard is grappling unsuccessfully. McCann becomes involved in trying to figure out what is going on, and his bravery and pig-headedness are characteristics which are evident in a good many of the protagonists of Gilbert's later books.

Returning to this book for the first time since I was a teenager, I felt that it was interesting in itself, but mostly as a portrayal of its time (and be warned, this includes some racism on the part of some of the ex-soldiers in particular) and as a prototype for many of Gilbert's later books. In its day, it was very well reviewed, but really it's an apprentice work, and I have to say that the revelation of the criminal mastermind's identity (such as it is) comes as an anti-climax. Gilbert quickly became a highly accomplished storyteller, and if you haven't read him before, I'd recommend that you start with one of the books he wrote after this one.

The Return of Michael Gilbert

Regular readers of this blog will be well aware of my enthusiasm for the work of Michael Gilbert. He was one of the most successful male British crime writers of the post-war era, and during the course of his long career he showed an ability to master a wide range of different types of storytelling - espionage, adventure, classic detection, courtroom drama, the impossible crime mystery, the short story, the stage play, the tv script. That versatility probably counted against him, to some extent, in terms of fame or total book sales, as it did in respect of his colleague and contemporary Julian Symons. But like Symons', his achievements were remarkable.

So I am absolutely delighted that the latest British Library Crime Classic is Smallbone Deceased, widely regarded as one of the finest crime novels ever to be set within the legal profession. The story benefits from a pleasing plot, an unusual amateur sleuth, and an insider's view of life in a post-war solicitors' firm. What Gilbert would make of the way some legal professionals are so dependent on iffy technology and even iffier flow charts these days is an interesting question, one to which I think I can guess the answer; but I'm sure he'd have viewed some of the absurdities of present day legal life with the same dry humour that informed his portrayal of legal life in the 1950s. 

I'm equally pleased to say that this is not the only Michael Gilbert novel that will be appearing in the series this year. It will be followed by Death in Captivity and Death Has Deep Roots, two more fine stories, both of which were filmed. The splendidly varied settings and styles of the three books, taken together, demonstrate Gilbert's versatility better than any words of mine can do.

That said, I haven't resisted the opportunity to discuss Gilbert's life and work at some length in each of my introductions to the three books. My approach with these introductions, and with intros to the other books in the series, is to minimise repetition and to try to include fresh information wherever possible. In that endeavour, I benefited from valuable input from Gilbert's daughter, the novelist and radio presenter Harriett Gilbert.

Along with Symons (and, in a different way, Christie and Sayers) Gilbert was also a major influence on my own ambitions as a writer during my formative years as a teenager. He it was whose ability to combine a legal career with a career as a novelist enabled my parents to say - look, it can be done, you can get a "proper job" and still be a writer. So he has quite a bit to answer for. When I got to know him slightly in later life, I found him gracious in the extreme. It was a privilege to talk to and correspond with him, and it was a major highlight of my early years as a crime novelist when he supplied a nice endorsement of my novel Eve of Destruction. (Despite the fact that his legal practice in Lincoln's Inn had little in common with Harry Devlin's in Liverpool!) I like to think he'd be thrilled to see these three excellent novels enjoying a new life in the twenty-first century.

Forgotten Book - Murderer's Fen

Andrew Garve enjoyed a long and fairly illustrious career as a crime writer, as well as pursuing a successful career as a journalist under his real name, Paul Winterton. I tend to bracket him with Michael Gilbert, who was just a few years younger, because they were both versatile and highly professional writers whose books are invariably smooth reads. If I lean in favour of Gilbert, it's partly because he uses his legal expertise so brilliantly, and I think he was a slightly more gifted writer. But Garve was good, make no mistake about that.

Today I'm focusing on Murderer's Fen, a novel he wrote in the mid-Sixties and which is nowadays available again, thanks to Bello. If I didn't know Garve had written it, I could guess, because it features life on a boat as one of the elements in the story - Garve plainly loved sailing, almost to the point of obsession. It crops up time and again in his novels, and it's to his credit that although I'm not interested in the technical details of boats and sailing, this quirk doesn't irritate me at all.

Murderer's Fen is interesting as an example of the "inverted mystery". We're introduced to Alan Hunter, handsome and persuasive, while he's on holiday, eyeing up the girls. Before long we realise that he's actually a nasty piece of work, a sexual predator with little or no empathy for the girls he seduces. And soon, he has cause to contemplate murder.

Garve offers us a variation on the classic form of inverted mystery, by shifting the viewpoint from time to time between the culprit and the investigating detectives (a nicely contrasted pair). This device works well as a means of building suspense. An idea for a twist occurred to me which never materialised - perhaps I'll use it myself one day! Garve wasn't super-ingenious, really, but he knew how to tell a good story. And Murderer's Fen is a good read with an excellent setting in -naturally - Fen country.. 

Forgotten Book - The Crack in the Teacup

Michael Gilbert's The Crack in the Teacup, first published in 1966, was a book I borrowed from the library when I was about thirteen or so, and discovering what an entertaining writer he was. In those days, of course, he also seemed very contemporary in comparison to Christie and Sayers, for instance, and this element of his writing also appealed to the young Martin Edwards. I remember really enjoying this book in my youth, and wondered how it would hold up now that I'm so much older. To my delight, it gripped me from start to finish. And because I've now had a lifetime in the legal profession, I appreciated Gilbert's wry observations about legal life much more than I could have done all those years ago.

And that is despite the fact that this is in many ways a low-key book, quite close (as was The Dust and the Heat) in style to a mainstream novel, and not quite what you'd expect from a conventional thriller or detective story. Anthony Brydon, the hero, is a young solicitor. He's 23, and already a partner in his firm (blimey; wouldn't happen today) and has no experience with women (blimey again) despite his eagerness to put that right - something he achieves over the course of the story.

The setting is a pleasant, well-heeled coastal town. The place seems almost idyllic, but something unpleasant is going on beneath the surface. Anthony becomes convinced of the existence of some form of corrupt conspiracy, and delves into local politics and planning law in the course of his unlikely investigation. And along the way, The Crack in the Teacup turns into a sort of genteel British counterpart to Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, but with much less bloodshed, as Gilbert presents a compelling picture of the way that a society that can be ruined by corruption. And, Gilbert being a pragmatist with a cynical turn of mind, the result of Anthony's investigations is not quite what one might expect.

A book as under-stated as this won't appeal to everyone. There isn't even a killing until very near the end. But if you like cool, exceptionally readable and slyly humorous writing, and if you're interested in a picture of English provincial life in the 60s, you'll find a lot to please you in The Crack in the Teacup. It's one of the best books Gilbert ever wrote. The title, by the way, comes from W.H. Auden.

Forgotten Book - The Doors Open

I've read Michael Gilbert's novel The Doors Open three times. First, when I was about 13 or 14 and was reading it purely as a light thriller. Second, when I'd qualified as a solicitor, and had become familiar with the legal case that Gilbert references in the book, and which may have inspired part of the plot. And third, recently, when I wanted to see how it stood up to the test of time .Each time, I found it an enjoyable read.

The Doors Open was Gilbert's third book, and first appeared in 1949. At that time, he was finding his way as a crime writer, although his smooth and readable style was already much in evidence. He'd begun with a classic detective puzzler, then followed with a thriller, and he would continue to ring the changes with his novels for about half a century. This versatility is admirable, in my view, though it may have meant that he never became quite such a household name as his gifts would have suggested.

The stern critics Barzun and Taylor regard this book as "his least satisfactory work", but I don't agree. On the contrary, it begins with an intriguing prologue, which relates to the theme of the book rather than the storyline itself, and then moves on to an equally intriguing chance encounter between a likeable young accountant and a middle-aged man who is contemplating suicide. The latter is subsequently found dead, and the police take little interest. But there is something suspicious about the case, and the young accountant starts to dig deeper. Before long, his curiosity puts his life in jeopardy.

A wide range of characters come into the story, including Nap Rumbold (who would go on to star in Death Has Deep Roots), Angus McCann, who had taking a lead role in Gilbert's previous novel, and Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, Different people take centre stage at different times. Stucturally, therefore, the book is rather unorthodox, but although this method of telling a story is risky, in my opinion Gilbert gets away with it, simply because he is such an accomplished entertainer. Worth seeking out.

Forgotten Book- Close Quarters

Not long ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Harriett Gilbert, an acclaimed novelist and radio presenter - and also the daughter of one of my long-time favourite crime writers, Michael Gilbert. I invited her to be guest speaker at the Detection Club's most recent dinner, and like all all my colleagues I really enjoyed listening to Harriett talking, with great affection, about her father's work. And this splendid occasion, among other things, has prompted me to revisit several of his books.

Close Quarters, first published in 1947, was his first novel. I borrowed it from our local library at a very tender age; more recently, to my delight, I managed to lay my hands on a signed first edition, and because I think lovely books should be read, rather than just gazed at admiringly, I have just re-read it, with much pleasure. The story is set in 1937, and apparently Gilbert wrote it before the Second World War, but his time in service (including a spell as a prisoner of war in Italy) meant that his attempts to establish himself as an author were put on hold until hostilities ceased. Once he'd got into print, however, there was  no stopping him, and books and short stories began to flow from his pen.

Gilbert's work was exceptionally varied, but this first effort was very definitely in the tradition of the Golden Age whodunit. There is a "closed circle" setting which just happens to be a cathedral close. There's a cast of characters, maps of the close, and even a crossword puzzle which plays a part in the storyline. And Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who featured in several of Gilbert's later mysteries, makes his debut.

As you'd expect from a first novel, this one has some flaws. In particular, I feel that there are too many people - the first chapter introduces them at a rather dizzying rate, and although Gilbert's urbane storytelling style is already in evidence, I shared Hazlerigg's irritation at the fact that a crucial piece of information was kept from him for three days. Nonetheless, an enjoyable book, and the start of an admirable career. Many years later, incidentally, Gilbert returned to Melchester Cathedral for The Black Seraphim, though the later book wasn't a sequel to his debut.

Forgotten Book - Fear to Tread

Fear to Tread is one of Michael Gilbert's early books, dating from 1953, and isn't especially well-known. It's a thriller, rather than a detective story or a police novel, although Gilbert's series police detective Hazlerigg plays a small part in the story. But that's typical Gilbert: he focused on storytelling rather than writing series. Here, the hero is a headmaster called Mr Wetherall, whose hatred of bullying leads him into danger.

I first read the novel at the back end of the 60s, when I first discovered Gilbert. I have to confess that it didn't make as great an impression on me as much of his other work. Part of the reason for that is that much of the book's appeal lies in its depiction of shabby post-war London, and at that time, I didn't know London at all. Another explanation is that Gilbert was writing an authentic, and fairly realistic novel about crime and corruption. He even includes an extract from a newspaper report of 1953 to emphasise the topicality of his story. But writing topical crime fiction is a risky business.

It's risky because it dates quickly, and less than twenty years after the book was published, it didn't seem - at least to my younger self- to be in the least topical. Life had moved on. In many ways, the mood of this story is in tune with the post-war black and white films often to be found on the Talking Pictures TV channel. In the 21st century, on the other hand, the book has added value as a sort of social document.

Mr Wetherall stumbles across a glorified black market racket, and finds him up against some very ruthless criminals. Gilbert shows how a decent, relatively ordinary man can find himself threatened, and find himself drawing upon unsuspected reserves of courage. (Some of his later books are in a similar vein - an outstanding example is The Crack in the Teacup, one of my favourites). I liked this book better the second time around. It's not one of his finest books, but now I can admire the smoothness of Gilbert's storytelling. He made it look so easy. .

Guilty? aka By Whose Hand? - 1956 film review

I was delighted to spot Guilty?, a black and white crime film dating back to 1956, in the Talking Pictures schedule. This movie, also known as By Whose Hand?, is based on Michael Gilbert's novel Death Has Deep Roots, published five years earlier, which I've read and enjoyed a couple of times. As far as I know, it's the only film based on a Gilbert book other than the better-known Danger Within, based on Death in Captivity. This is rather surprising, given that Gilbert wrote vividly; his work was very suitable for screen adaptation.

Gilbert didn't write the screenplay - that was done by someone called Maurice J. Wilson. The credits reveal that additional dialogue was supplied by Ernest Dudley - who along with Gilbert was one of the founders of the Crime Writers' Association. But there is an even more intriguing connection to be deduced from the credits. The soundtrack was composed by Bruce Montgomery - the real name of Gilbert's fellow Detection Club member Edmund Crispin. Quite something to have a fellow crime writer produce the music for a film of your book!

The story combines a courtroom drama - a young Frenchwoman is on trial for her life- with an adventurous investigation into a criminal conspiracy that dates back to the war and the Nazi occupation of France (hence the "deep roots"). The accused's solicitor is Nap Rumbold, one of those appealing characters who crop up sporadically in Gilbert's work without quite becoming major series characters.

John Justin plays Rumbold, and does a a good job with a meaty part. Andree Debarr is his glamorous client, and Barbara Laage is a mysterious blonde woman who seems to be following Rumbold around for no particular reason. A sound cast includes such reliable actors as Russell Napier and Sydney Tafler., while Donald Wolfit plays the judge. I enjoyed the film, even though it doesn't match the excellence of the novel.

Forgotten Book - The End of the Web

George Sims' reputation has faded since his death in 1999. He was never an especially prolific writer, and his novels aren't easy to categorise, though they can probably be called thrillers. But he was an interesting novelist, someone who liked to avoid the obvious, and since there's been little or no coverage of his work on the internet in recent years, I've picked as my Forgotten Book for today a novel called The End of the Web.

The first thing to say about it is that it's a story structured in a very unusual way. Arguably, the key twist in the plot occurs only about one-third of the way through. I don't want to give too much away, but it's inevitable that such an unorthodox approach won't be to everyone's taste. Indeed, Sims' friend Harry Keating, a leading critic of the time, disapproved. That's significant, because Harry admired Sims' work, and was President of the Detection Club at the time when Sims was elected to membership. He was highly perceptive, and indeed, he included Sims' earlier novel, The Last Best Friend, in his list of the 100 Best Crime and Mystery Novels.

Personally, I prefer The End of the Web (though The Last Best Friend certainly has merit). Harry argued more than once in print that Sims' unorthodoxy stemmed from amateurism - he wasn't a full time writer. I'm not entirely sure about that - Michael Gilbert is a good example of a part-timer who was the ultimate professional when it came to writing, and there are many others. But it's clear that Sims liked to go his own way, and explore ideas that appealed to him. He also drew heavily on his own intimate knowledge of the world of book dealers.

In this story, Leo Selver is a dealer who gets out of his depth when he takes part in a shady transaction. He also gets himself mixed up with a pretty young girl half his age, which proves to be unwise. The real focus of the story, though, is on the efforts of young Ed Buchanan to find out what Leo has got himself involved with. It's an interesting story, quite short and snappy, yet at the same time packed with Sims' characteristic digressions. Overall, well worth a read.

Forgotten Book - The Undetective

Bruce Graeme (1900-82) was a Golden Age writer who enjoyed a long and prolific career, yet until recently I'd never read any of his books as far as I can recall. Then Geoff Bradley, editor of CADS, recommended that I take a look at The Undetective (1962), telling me that it was an unusual story that he really enjoyed. Having just read the book, I share Geoff's view, and I suspect it's a good example of an original story that stands above and apart from most of the work of an author who was a talented storyteller, perhaps wrote too much to reach the heights on a regular basis.

Iain Carter is a happily married crime writer who is struggling to make a decent living. His lovely wife Susan (so lovely, in fact, that I became slightly irritated by the repeated references to her perfection) has a likeable brother who happens to be a slightly indiscreet policeman. Iain stumbles on the idea of writing a new series of books which make innovative use of information gleaned from his brother-in-law. But to protect his identity, he goes to very elaborate lengths indeed to create a pseudonym that cannot be traced to him.

His first book under the new pen-name, The Undetective, proves to be a huge success, and Iain finds himself having to take increasingly convoluted measures to protect his secret. The plot complications thicken when a murder occurs, and the mysterious and pseudonymous crime writer becomes a prime suspect.

An especially pleasing bonus of the story is that Graeme adds copious references to the Crime Writers' Association - one scene even takes place at a CWA meeting. Various CWA members of the time,s such as Michael Gilbert, T.C. H. Jacobs and Margot Bennett, earn a mention. He even includes a dig at Julian Symons, who reviews unkindly one of the books Iain continues to publish under his own name. The plot is, admittedly, implausible, but there is a very neat solution, and it all makes for a very good read. This is a Forgotten Book that undoubtedly deserves to be better known.

Forgotten Book - At the Villa Rose

At the Villa Rose is the name of a very good blog, run by Xavier Lechard. It derives its name from my Forgotten Book for today, the 1910 mystery novel written by A.E.W. Mason, which I've just re-read after very many years. And the book is as enjoyable and thought-provoking as Xavier's blog.

I was first introduced to Mason, and his detective Inspector Hanaud, when I was a schoolboy. I used to borrow from the local library titles in a Hodder series, edited by Michael Gilbert, which reprinted classics of mystery and adventure. It was through this series that I first came across Anthony Berkeley's Trial and Error, and Raymond Postgate's Verdict of Twelve. Two masterpieces. In other words, Michael Gilbert had excellent taste, and was a man whose judgment could be trusted.

I can't recall now much of what Gilbert had to say about Mason, but I do remember that he admired The House of the Arrow very much, and although that is, I think, a better book than At the Villa Rose, both are of a high calibre. It's worth noting that At the Villa Rose was published in 1910, before the "Golden Age" got under way, but it boasts a great version of the Holmes-Watson pairing in Hanaud and Julius Ricardo, and a clever plot, with numerous neat touches, plus a classy, cosmopolitan setting.

Mason based the story on a real life murder case, but he injected imagination into the true crime scenario. Where he erred, I think, was in revealing the solution too soon. Too much of the latter part of the book is devoted to explanation. This was a structural weakness absent from The House of the Arrow. All the same, At the Villa Rose is great fun, and Hanaud a truly appealing example of "the Great Detective."

Stay Close by Harlan Coben - review

Stay Close is a stand-alone best-seller by America's Harlan Coben that one laudatory review described as a "beach read". For my part, I started reading it on holiday as a bit of light entertainment while finding my way around the railway network of Northern Italy and was gripped straight away.. I've never met Coben, but I've read a number of his books over the years. He's a highly accomplished craftsman, and there's no doubt he's a highly intelligent writer. Despite the lightness of touch in his books, there's a cleverness about his work that possibly he likes to conceal, but even so, it is evident in many ways.

If I were to write a thriller myself (unlikely, but not impossible) I'd study the methods of the likes of Lee Child and Harlan Coben, because they have mastered a form that is much more difficult to handle than it looks. The late great Michael Gilbert always argued that writing thrillers was harder than writing detective stories and since he excelled at both forms, I am not about to argue the point. A great thriller, like a great pop song, demands a lot of artistry on the part of its author.

This story introduces us to Megan, a former stripper turned respectable suburban mom, a likeable cop called Broome, a washed-up photographer called Ray and a host of memorable minor characters including an unlikely but unforgettable pair of pscyho killers. When a rich man's son goes missing, a sequence of events is set in motion that brings Megan face to face with some unsavoury aspects of her secret past. One of the great strengths of the book is the humour - there are plenty of funny lines.

The plot is structured ingeniously so that the reader is distracted from seeing what is really going on. And what is that? Well, I suspected from an early stage a modern variant of one of Anthony Berkeley's favourite plot devices and this proved to be the case, but. I won't say any more as I don't want to give anything away. The book's worth reading for the plot alone, but it has more to offer than that - pace, wit and verve. My only reservation was that I felt the story was overloaded with sentimental set-piece situations - a wife on life support, a mother with Alzheimer's, a woman with cancer, and various other devices meant to tug on the heart-strings - but I bet Hollywood will love them. All the ingredients of a successful modern commercial thriller are here, and Coben mixes them with great assurance.

Fogotten Book - Verdict of Twelve

I've mentioned before Raymond Postgate's Verdict of Twelve, but I wanted to read it again before featuring it as a Friday Forgotten Book, and this I've now done. In all, I've read it three times - first in an edition with an excellent intro by Michael Gilbert, who selected some splendid crime classics for a series published by Hodder. He is far from alone in admiring Verdict of Twelve. Postgate was the brother in law of G.D.H. Cole, but his novel was very different from Cole's work - it owed much more in its ironic style to Anthony Berkeley.

The book has three parts plus an epilogue. In the first part,we are introduced to members of a jury about to hear a murder case. One or two of the jurors have dark secrets of their own, and Postgate provides a series of vivid portraits that I found gripping. One character, a dry academic, reminded me a bit of Douglas Cole, actually, though Postgate wisely made sure that there were differences as well as similarities in the man's CV and personality.

The second part of the story tells us about the murder. But who is to be the victim, and who the killer? It's a rather grim story about cruelty to a child, and it has a literary inspiration that is not explained until the later stages of the book. Then comes the third part, which takes us inside the jury room,and shows how the debate about guilt and innocence shifts - often according to prejudice, rather than reason. If you are sceptical about juries - and I always have been - this book does nothing to make you share the view of such great lawyers as Lord Denning and Lord Devlin that the jury is an essential bulwark of freedom and justice.

There is a nice twist in the epilogue, but I guess the big question about this novel is - what does it tell us about justice? Nothing comfortable, that's for sure. Postgate's Marxist take on things won't be to everyone's taste, but I enjoyed this book as much on a third reading as I did previously. I really must try again Postgate's two later crime novels - when I first read them, I felt they were a let-down, but maybe they are worth another look. In any case, Verdict of Twelve remains a must-read for any fan of classic crime.

Books about Crime Fiction

I've a long-held interest in books about crime fiction, as well as crime stories themselves. There's been an upsurge of interest in the genre and its history in recent years, and as a result, the quantity and quality of books about it have increased and improved. Today I would just like to highlight a couple of titles that have come my way.

First, a new(ish) biography of Raymond Chandler, written by Tom Williams and published last year by Aurum Press, who always seem to produce very attractive books. I don't often talk about Chandler on this blog, because there's no shortage of coverage of his work elsewhere, but I've enjoyed his work for many years,,and a long time ago I was commissioned by the Folio Society, of all people, to write an essay on "the Chandler Style", which was great fun to write.

Williams' book - his first - is extensively researched, and casts, as he says, an unflinching eye on his subject's character. He also makes the point that the more he understood the darker parts of Chandler's life, the more he admired his literary achievements. Inevitably, in a book like this, there are a few gaps, and I'd have been interested in reading more about his friendship with Michael Gilbert, and his interest in true crime - the Maybrick and Wallace cases, for instance. But this is just a quibble. Raymond Chandler: A Life is certainly a worthwhile addition to the list of books about a fine writer.

Very different in style and content, but most entertaining, is The Agatha Christie Miscellany, by Cathy Cook, published by the History Press, who also know how to turn out a nice book. This is a collection of bits and pieces about the Queen of Crime and her work with copious illustrations. It's small enough to fit into a pocket or handbag and makes an excellent dip-in volume. And a good present for a crime fan, I'd say.