Smallbone Deceased

This edition published 2019 by

The British Library

96 Euston Road

London

NW1 2DB

Originally published in 1950 by Hodder & Stoughton, London

Copyright © 1950 Michael Gilbert

Introduction copyright © 2019 Martin Edwards

Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7123 5297 0

eISBN 978 0 7123 6469 0

Front cover © NRM/Pictorial Collection/Science & Society Picture Library

Text design, typesetting and eBook by Tetragon, London

‌Introduction

Smallbone Deceased was first published in 1950, and few British detective stories during the rest of the Fifties came close to matching it in terms of quality. This was Michael Gilbert’s fourth novel, and the first in which he drew extensively on his first-hand knowledge of life inside a London law firm. The book blends in masterly fashion an authentic setting, pleasingly differentiated characters, smoothly readable prose, and a clever puzzle.

The opening scene, set at a dinner in a Holborn restaurant, offers a witty introduction to partners and staff of Horniman, Birley and Craine, “the Gordon Selfridge of solicitors, different departments to suit all tastes and purses”. Several of those present will shortly become suspects in a murder case when a dead body is found at the firm’s premises at Lincoln’s Inn, concealed within a hermetically sealed deed box. Also in attendance is Henry Bohun, “the very newest thing in solicitors”, a brilliant and slightly mysterious young man with a flair for amateur detection.

When the novel first came out, its publishers (Hodder & Stoughton) hailed it as “a connoisseur’s piece”, and they were not exaggerating. Unfortunately, the book appeared before the Crime Writers’ Association (of which Gilbert became a founder member) was formed, and thus there was no opportunity for the story to compete for a CWA Dagger, although its quality was recognised by reviewers in Britain and the US. In A Catalogue of Crime, Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor described it as Gilbert’s “masterwork”, while Julian Symons included the book in The Hundred Best Crime Stories (1958). Similarly, H.R.F. Keating included it in his own survey of the “hundred best” crime and mystery novels, published in 1987. Three years later, the CWA featured the novel in its own “hundred best” list, and so subsequently did the Mystery Writers of America.

Keating described the book as a fine example of the classic detective story—two floor plans are supplied in the finest Golden Age tradition—and went so far as to compare the plot with “Agatha Christie at her best; as neatly dovetailed, as inherently complex yet retaining a decent credibility, and as full of cunningly-suggested red herrings”. He pinpointed as an incidental pleasure Gilbert’s “depiction of Britain’s immediate post-war years, with an electricity cut playing a notable part in the establishing of alibis”, and his stylish, urbane way with words, while arguing plausibly that touches of realism in the narrative “make you feel this ingenious tale is a good deal more closely related to real life than your average detective story”.

Gilbert had begun his crime writing career with Close Quarters, a detective puzzle in the classic style of the Golden Age whodunit, and followed his debut with two lively thrillers—an early sign of the determination to keep trying something different that became his trade mark as a crime writer. Chief Inspector Hazlerigg played a part in each story, as he does in Smallbone Deceased. This is not, however, a novel which concentrates on police procedure.

Henry Bohun’s sleuthing is an even more significant component of the book than Hazlerigg’s official investigation. Bohun is a likeable and memorable individual who featured in no other novels. Intriguingly, he had made his debut in Gilbert’s very first published story, “Weekend at Wapentake”, which appeared in (of all journals) Good Housekeeping on 16 October 1948; in that story, he was already a partner in the firm. An appendix in John Cooper’s collection of Gilbert radio plays, The Man Who Couldn’t Sleep, reveals that Bohun appeared in a total of nine short stories and a six-part radio thriller.