7.8 /10 1 Votes7.8
Media type Print ISBN 978-0-340-32037-2 Followed by Death Has Deep Roots Genre Crime Fiction | 3.9/5 Goodreads Language English Pages 253 (1st edition) Originally published 1950 Preceded by The Doors Open Page count 253 (1st edition) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar Michael Gilbert books, Crime Fiction books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Smallbone Deceased is a British mystery novel by Michael Gilbert, first published in the United Kingdom in 1950 by Hodder and Stoughton and in the United States by Harper & Brothers. A practicing lawyer himself, Gilbert made the setting of the novel a London solicitor's office. It was Gilbert's fourth novel and, like his three earlier ones, features Chief Inspector Hazlerigg as the official investigator; it also has an unofficial detective who works closely with Hazlerigg, a newly qualified solicitor named Henry Bohun who has just been hired by the firm in which the murders occur. A parainsomniac (a person who needs only a very few hours of sleep per night), Bohun, whose name is pronounced Boon, makes this his only appearance in a Gilbert novel but goes on to be the protagonist of a number of short stories.
Reception and/or Appraisal
Margery H. Oates at the New York Times called it "a first-rate job" upon its publication:
When an anonymous corpse is found in a office strong box, when a trustee disappears and a young partner becomes erratic, the... atmosphere becomes tense... The author is a lawyer who looks at the law and the people in it with equal parts of mirth and wisdom.
A much later appraisal comes from Barzun and Taylor's encyclopedic Catalogue of Crime:
Two splendid murders on the premise of a London solicitor. The motives ae good, and one must call excellent the detection by Inspector Hazlerigg and an amateur assistant, who enjoys parainsomnia. As a bonus we are given a method of mortgaging property already fully mortgaged, and a pleasant bit of fooling about the Ascheim-Zondek test and its antecedents. All in all, Gilbert's masterwork.
The Guardian's obituary of Gilbert by H. R. F. Keating described the novel as:
a classic of the genre...rich with everyday details of a law practice, both good and naughty, dancing too with pawky humour; at the same time it sets a puzzle to please the most exigent of readers.
The book was ranked 64th in the The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time, published in 1990 by the British-based Crime Writers' Association. Five years later, it was ranked 80th in the The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time, published by the Mystery Writers of America.
The Telegraph's obituary of Gilbert also praised it as "one of his finest novels".