Introduction

Michael Gilbert, Entertainer

It could easily be argued that Michael Gilbert was one of the greatest crime fiction writers of the twentieth century. He belongs to a very select group of writers who have been named Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America, awarded a Diamond Dagger for career accomplishments by the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain and honoured for his lifetime achievement at Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention. Yet in 2007, less than a year after his death on February 8, 2006, at the age of 93, only one of his more than forty books – and a short story collection at that – was in print in the United States. Why this is should be so tells us more about the lamentable state of publishing today than it does about Gilbert’s talent and his immense contribution to the genre.

Some critics have argued that Gilbert would have done better to stick with just one form of the crime novel, suggesting that variety is not the surest path to commercial success. The principle of same book, just a little bit different, has kept many lesser talents at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Instead, Gilbert tackled virtually every aspect of the genre: classic detective stories, police procedurals, spy novels, adventure stories and courtroom dramas. There was nary a dud in the lot and several that probably will be read with pleasure a hundred years from now. Nor did he restrict himself to the novel. In a day and age when the short story has fallen into disfavour, he was a master of the form. One early collection. Game Without Rules, was named by Ellery Queen as one of the most important mystery short story collections of all time. These droll stories featuring those cutthroat but always gentlemanly spies Calder and Behrens were a hit on British and American television several decades later.

Gilbert’s first book, Close Quarters, set in the summer of 1937, was begun in 1938 while he was a schoolmaster in Salisbury, and the Melchester Cathedral of the book is obviously patterned after Salisbury Cathedral, albeit a considerably smaller version. War interrupted both Gilbert’s teaching and fledgling writing careers. While serving with the Royal Horse Artillery in North Africa and Europe, Gilbert was captured and spent part of the war in an Italian prisoner of war camp, a setting he used in one of this most successful novels, 1952’s The Danger Within (published in England as Death in Captivity). It was filmed in 1958 and starred Richard Todd, Michael Wilding and Richard Attenborough.

Close Quarters was finally published in 1947. Years later Gilbert complained that he found the book somewhat “cluttered.” And while it’s true that this leisurely apprentice effort lacks some of the subtle control found in his subsequent books, many critics begged to differ with this judgment, including National Book Award winner Jacques Barzun, who called it “one of the good stories of murder in godly surroundings,” remarking that the diagrams accompanying the text make it easy to follow the clues. Frank Denton, writing in The St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers, said that Gilbert’s maiden effort was a solid achievement which paled only when compared with his later books where “experience brought maturity of writing.” Gilbert, he suggested, could “always be depended on to deliver solid reading entertainment.”

Smallbone Deceased (1950) is often considered one of Gilbert’s masterpieces. Like many of his books, it borrows on his postwar experience as a solicitor. Gilbert numbered the Conservative Party and Raymond Chandler (whose will he drafted) among his clients. He did virtually all of his writing while commuting by train between his home in Kent and his law offices in London.

While Gilbert received an extraordinary number of literary awards and honours in his long lifetime, he was not without his detractors. He expressed amusement when British critics (and fellow mystery writers) Julian Symons and H.R.F. Keating complained that Gilbert fell short of greatness because he was more concerned with entertaining than in enlightening his readers. “I find the whole thing puzzling,” Gilbert wrote in 1980. “What is a writer to do if he is not allowed to entertain?” The passing of time did not alter his opinion. Ten years later he dismissed those deeply analytical novels which serve primarily as a showcase for their author’s personalities as not “members of the true and honourable line of crime stories. They may be something else. As to what I offer no opinion.”

Tom & Enid Schantz
June 2007
Lyons, Colorado