Michael Gilbert

Early life and education

Gilbert was born on 17 July 1912 in Billingshay, Lincolnshire, England to father Bernard Samuel Gilbert, a writer, and mother Berwyn Minna Cuthbert. From 1920-1926, Gilbert attended St. Peters school in Seaford, East Sussex and Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon from 1926–1931. Following graduation, he attended London University to study law but was unable to finish due to financial concerns. After becoming a schoolmaster for Cathedral School in the Close at Salisbury, Gilbert returned to studying law, receiving his degree in 1937 and graduating with honors. It was at this time that he began to work on his first mystery novel, Close Quarters.

Military service

When England became involved in World War II, Gilbert joined the Honourable Artillery Company, serving in North Africa and Italy. In 1943, he was captured and taken as a prisoner of war in northern Italy near Parma. Along with another soldier, he was able to escape after the Italian surrender, with their escape involving a five-hundred mile journey south to reach the Allied lines.

Law career

In 1947, Gilbert joined the London law firm of Trower, Still & Keeling in Lincoln's Inn. Eventually becoming a partner there, he practiced law with the group until his retirement in 1983.

Writing career

Gilbert's writing career spanned the years 1947 to 1999 with his final work being Over and Out. The genres his fiction novels enveloped included police procedurals, spy novels, short stories, courtroom dramas, classical mysteries, adventure thrillers, and crime novels. Following his death, the New York Times quoted one of Gilbert's publishers regarding his writing style: "Michael was an exceptionally fine storyteller, but he's hard to classify. He's not a hard-boiled writer in the classic sense, but there is a hard edge to him, a feeling within his work that not all of society is rational, that virtue is not always rewarded.".

Unlike other fiction writers of the mystery and crime genre, Gilbert didn't make use of a single recurring character. His works, however, did include characters that would appear on and off: Inspector Hazlerigg; Inspector Petrella; Chief Superintendent Morrissey; Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens. Posthumously, four collections of his short stories were published. By 2016, his works consisted of 30 novels and approximately 185 stories in 13 collections. In addition to his novels, Gilbert wrote several stage plays along with numerous radio and television plays.

Gilbert was known for writing only during his five-times-a-week commute by train between Kent and Lincoln's Inn. He was quoted as saying that this habit allowed him to "carry out a full and normal day's work as a solicitor, and to devote the evenings and weekends to my family."

While his earlier works were set in courtrooms and the offices of lawyers, his later works depicted police investigations and criminal acts. Some of his novels were set in a boys' boarding school. Others were about a serial thrill killer (The Night of the Twelfth); a television action hero and military advisor to the ruler of an Arab sheikdom (The 92nd Tiger); suspense in Communist Hungary just prior to the 1956 uprising (Be Shot for Sixpence); municipal corruption in a seaside town (The Crack in the Teacup); Etruscan art relics (The Family Tomb); and IRA terrorists (Trouble).

Legacy, honors, critical acclaim

In 1980, Gilbert was made a C.B.E. (Commander, Order of the British Empire). Other honors include receiving a Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association for lifetime achievement in 1994 and being named as a "grandmaster" by the Mystery Writers of America in 1988.

One of Gilbert's earliest works, Smallbone Deceased, was included in crime-writer H.R.F. Keating's list, Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books. In Gilbert's New York Times obituary, his American publisher, Kent Carroll of Carroll & Graf, was quoted as saying about him, "He was always so utterly urbane and civilized. He wrote about a sordid world from the perspective of a gentleman. There was something comforting as well as exciting about that.

British mystery writer and critic Julian Symons referred to Gilbert as a writer who chose not to offer "personal feelings about the world and society" but to write "what will amuse his audience, and if an idea or a subject seems disturbing it is put aside." Symons went on to state, "Yet there remains an impression that he is not quite content to be appreciated just as an entertainer, but that some restraint (legal caution, perhaps) checks him from writing in a way that fully expresses his personality."

Personal life and death

Gilbert married Roberta Mary Marsden in 1947; together the couple had two sons and five daughters. One daughter, Harriett, born in 1948, is a novelist and broadcaster for BBC World Service. Gilbert died at age 93 on 8 February 2006 at his home in Luddesdown, Gravesend, Kent. At the time of his death he was survived by Roberta, his wife of nearly sixty years, and all of their children.