Snag Smallbone Deceased (Inspector Hazlerigg, #4) Articulated By Michael Gilbert Expressed As Print

eleven o'clock this mornng a partner in this firm of solicitors what's their name Horniman, Birley and Craine, opened one of their deed boxes, The box was supposed to contain certain papers relating to a trust, What they found was one of the trustees, Name of Smallbone Marcus Smallbone very dead, Oh, how I adore the writings of Michael F, Gilbert. People who can write unobtrusively beautiful English, terrific characters, interesting and sometimes diabolical plots and always get their facts straight are very rare, but he was one such.
This is a murder mystery about an English firm of solicitors, and is funny, interesting, and not at all obvious, "Getcher programs! Can't tell da players widdout a program!"
Oh how I wished for a good old stadium program seller while reading this book, There were so many suspects and peripheral characters in " Smallbone Deceased" I had trouble keeping track, At one point I even got confused and thought one of the suspects was the police detective and the detective was a suspect,
I would have quit, but the story itself was good enough that I really did want to know who done it and HOW they done it.
Sort of like "Knives Out, " Henry Bohun has just started work as a newly qualified solicitor with the reputable firm of Horniman, Birley and Craine when a body is found in a deed box.
The dead Mr Smallbone's presence threatens to destroy the firm's reputation especially as the police in the person of Inspector Hazlerigg start thinking that the death has to have been an inside job.


Hazlerigg decides to trust the delightful Henry Bohun

as he started with the firm after the murder and Henry finds himself involved in the investigation and thoroughly enjoying it and providing some well timed information to Hazelrigg.
This is a well written and fast paced novel with a brilliant picture of life in a solicitor's office, I loved the writing and the humour and I thought the book was well plotted and I certainly didn't work out who the murderer was though the clues are there.


If you want to read a conventional Golden Age crime story then this fits the bill even though it wasn't published until after World War II.
The book is part of the Hazlerigg series but the series can be read in any order, Some of the best detective stories e, g. , Sayerss Murder Must Advertise, or Cyril Hares Tragedy at Law are those in which the author has a firsthand knowledge of the workplace in which the murder occurs.
This is one of thoseGilberts story of murder at a law office is sharp, amusing, and enthrallingeven when hes describing the boring parts, Bochum and Hazelrigg make a great team, and it all snaps together so satisfyingly, Excellent counterpart to Sarah Caudwells legal mysteries, A unique filing system, . .

Young Bob Horniman has taken over as partner in the law firm of Horniman, Birley and Craine, following the very recent death of his father, the senior partner, Abel Horniman.
Abel was an organisational fanatic, so theres a place for everything in the office, and everything is in its place, Thats the theory anyway, until one day Bob and his secretary are looking for papers relating to an estate of which his father was a trustee, On opening the relevant deed box, they find the papers are missing, and in their place is the rather decayed body of Marcus Smallbone, the other trustee.
Enter Inspector Hazlerigg and his team, . .

Gilbert was a lawyer in real life, and he has a lot of fun here with the portrayal of a midrank law firm successful enough, with a solid clientele of the rich and respectable, but not dealing in glamorous criminal law.
Rather, these lawyers make a living out of wills, estates, trusts and property conveyancing, When it becomes clear that Smallbone has been deceased for several weeks, Hazleriggs first task is to determine who was working in the firm over the likely period.
He spots a name he knows Henry Bohun, a newly qualified lawyer who joined the firm on the day the body was discovered, meaning that he is almost certainly innocent.
Hazlerigg knows something of the man, thats hes intelligent and resourceful with a good war record, so asks him to become a kind of “inside” man for the investigation.
And, while we see a fair amount of Hazlerigg and his men, Bohun quickly becomes the main protagonist of the story,

The plot is interesting and reasonably fairplay, though I got nowhere near the solution, The format is rather different from the usual mystery novel, in that, while everyone who was working in the firm is a suspect, none of them are really given known motives.
The hunt for the motive is played out alongside a lot of checking of alibis and so on to work out who would have had the opportunity to kill Smallbone.
Theres also far less emphasis than usual on the detective interviewing the suspects we often learn what suspects have said secondhand, through conversations between various policemen or Hazlerigg and Bohun.
I must admit I found this all kept me at more of a distance from most of the characters than I prefer, though the young lawyers all come vividly and enjoyably to life.


But the book has other delights which more than make up for this minor lack, As a new boy, Bohun is more involved with the lowly employees than the exalted partners, and the portrayal of the young, exclusively male, lawyers and the female secretaries is great.
Sexism is of course rampant, as it was in offices back in those days, but here its treated as fun, with the young men flirting and the women either responding favourably or rejecting them brutally.
We get to overhear the womens view of the men amongst themselves, and also the mens opinions of the women, Its all done for humour, so theres no meanness or nastiness about it, and it keeps the tone delightfully lighthearted for the most part, However, we also see power at play, and how easily employees can be bullied by their bosses with no real means of fighting back,

Meantime, Hazleriggs team are checking out other aspects of the case, We follow Sergeant Plumptree as he tries to sift through all the various alibis of the staff, and Mr Hoffman, an accountant, who is examining the trust of which Smallbone was a trustee, and also the wider financial affairs of the firm.
Surprisingly, Gilbert manages to make these rather dry subjects highly entertaining, Poor Plumptree has a tough job pinning down the whereabouts of his suspects and were shown the plodding, painstaking and often frustrating nature of the work, but all done with an edge of humour.
Hoffman is helped in his task by Bohun, that man of many talents, and between them they show how tiny discrepancies can give the clue that leads to the unravelling of the most tightly woven plot.


This is my first Michael Gilbert, so I dont know how usual it is for Hazlerigg to take a rather muted role in the investigation, but I really didnt feel as if I got to know him much at all.
However I enjoyed Bohun as a kind of amateur sidekick to the police, and found the office flirtations and rivalries highly entertaining, The whole thing is very well written, with that lightness of tone despite dark deeds that I find so characteristic and appealing about Golden Age crime this was published in, so a little later than true Golden Age, but it feels as if it fits square in that category nonetheless.
The British Library has republished three of Gilberts books this year, and Im very much looking forward to reading the other two, Highly recommended.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library,

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