Tangled Web UK Review September 2007
Even Murderers Take Holidays and Other Mysteries by
Michael Gilbert
hbk out August 07
Published by Hale
at £18.99
I yield to no-one in my admiration for the late, great Michael Gilbert, whose smoothly
entertaining novels and short stories showed astonishing versatility for more than half
a century. So I fell on this gathering of previously uncollected stories (some of them
very short indeed) with delight and was not disappointed. Gilbert would, surely, never
have expected that stories he dashed off for newspapers and magazines as a young
writer would have survived for so long, and inevitably the quality is not uniform. But
his craftsmanship is evident throughout. 'The Drop Shot' is a masterpiece of economy
and 'Cumberland v. Cumberland' a reminder of Gilbert's gift for legal trickery (his
day job was as a very distinguished London solicitor.) John Cooper provides a short
introduction as well as a list of the works featuring some of Gilbert's most successful
recurrent characters: Petrella, Hazlerigg and the gentlemanly spies Calder and
Behrens. Hale are to be congratulated for publishing this book, which is indispensable
for Gilbert fans.
(
Martin Edwards
- author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries)
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