Death Has Deep Roots

Starred review from September 2, 2019
In this entry in the British Library Crime Classics series, first published in 1951, Gilbert (1912–2006) does a masterly job of blending whodunit, courtroom drama, and thriller. Victoria Lamartine, a Frenchwoman living in London a few years after WWII, has been charged with stabbing Maj. Eric Thoseby to death in his room. During the war, Thoseby worked as a British agent in the same part of France where Lamartine ran errands for the Resistance. The prosecution believes that Lamartine was motivated by hatred of the victim, who fathered her child and then abandoned them both. On the eve of her trial, she switches attorneys and enlists Noel Anthony Pontarlier Rumbold to defend her, asserting not only her innocence but that Thoseby was not the father of her now-dead son. Rumbold’s efforts on her behalf, which take him across the Channel to investigate, expose him to danger, even as skilled barrister Hargest Macrea uses his superior cross-examination skills to raise doubts about the government’s case. Readers who like their detection balanced by action will be more than satisfied.

September 1, 2019
Can't decide whether to read a British courtroom drama or a tale of continental adventure? This tour de force, originally published in 1951, provides both. According to Crown Prosecutor Claudian Summers, Victoria Lamartine came from France to the U.K. after the war to find Maj. Eric Thoseby, the British officer working with the Resistance who'd fathered her late son, and killed him when he finally agreed to meet with her at London's Family Hotel, where owner Honorifique Sainte, who'd come from the same Loire region as her, employed her as a receptionist. Vicky's own take on this story is of course different: She'd had no reason to stab Thoseby to death because she'd never had an affair with him but sought him out only in the hope that he could give her information about Lt. Julian Wells, the real father of her child. On the eve of her trial, Vicky fires the solicitor who'd planned to plead her guilty and ask for mercy and instead begs young Nap Rumbold to take over her defense. After Rumbold briefs barrister Hargest Macrea to assume courtroom duties and asks Maj. Angus McCann to look for exculpatory evidence in England, he books passage for Angers in search of Wells. His quest is complicated by persistent rumors that his quarry was discovered, captured, and executed by the Gestapo during the war and hints that a group of gold smugglers somehow involved with the case are determined to keep Nap from learning anything, even if they have to resort to violence. "This isn't a detective story," grouses Macrea, but he's doubly wrong: After deftly cutting back and forth between Nap's increasingly fraught inquiries and Macrea's legal tactics, Gilbert (The Curious Conspiracy: And Other Crimes, 2002, etc.) pulls them together with a virtuoso snap, producing an ending as logical as it is surprising. A grand example of Gilbert's ceaselessly inventive attempts to expand the remit of the traditional whodunit.

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October 1, 2019
Gilbert (1912-2006) arrived on the British crime-fiction scene toward the end of the golden age of Christie, et al., and while he is less known today than many of his predecessors, his work has aged beautifully. Published in 1951, this latest addition to the British Library Crime Classics series shows Gilbert at his best, displaying both impressive psychological acuity and innovative plotting, combining courtroom drama with amateur sleuthing. What starts out looking like a locked-room mystery (a former intelligence officer is killed in a London hotel room, and a Frenchwoman who worked with the victim in the Resistance appears to be the only person who could have done the deed) quickly moves into something much more complex. Alternating between courtroom scenes at the Old Bailey and the efforts of two investigators for the defense?one working in London, the other in France?to supply the facts necessary to unlock the locked room, Gilbert serves a perfectly blended narrative stew. The give-and-take between prosecution and defense is compelling in itself, and the French backstory, a kind of Resistance thriller in microcosm, adds satisfying richness to the meal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)