Smallbone Deceased
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- £7.49
Publisher Description
Horniman, Birley and Craine are a highly respected legal firm with clients reaching to the highest in the land. They use a system of keeping important documents in deed-boxes and when one of them is found to contain the remains of a certain Mr. Smallbone, the threat of scandal reaches their innermost psyche. Even worse, the police now suspect that the murder was an inside job. Suspicion falls on everyone and each member of staff keeps a wary eye open. Gilbert is both authoritative in his narrative and writes with such style and pace that ‘Smallbone Deceased’ is regarded as one of his best.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this ingenious reissue in the British Library Crime Classics series first published in 1950 from Gilbert (1912 2006), Henry Bohun starts work at the London law firm of Horniman, Birley and Craine at an unusually dramatic time. A month before his first day, firm founder Abel Horniman, a stickler for organization, was found dead at his desk, pen in hand. Horniman's son, Bob, who's catching up with correspondence, finds a letter relating to client Marcus Smallbone from another law office that was trying to contact him in connection with a trust. But when the sealed box that was supposed to contain the documents relating to that trust was opened, Smallbone's corpse was found instead. Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who has worked with a friend of Bohun's, hopes that Bohun will be able to provide him with insider information though his superior warns Hazlerigg not to be "like that mug in the detective story who confides all his best ideas to a friendly sort of character who turns out to be the murderer in Chapter Sixteen." Gilbert expertly combines fairly planted clues and self-referential humor. Well-drawn personalities and plausible twists are additional pluses. This high-quality whodunit deserves a wide readership.
