Smallbone Deceased (1950)
Blurb:
My review:
Map of Horniman, Birley and Craine
On plotting, readability, characterisation and detection, this tale of murder in a law-firm ranks highly. While there are some obvious similarities to Sayers’s Murder Must Advertise and Blake’s Minute for Murder, the story is distinctive. The first murder is the startling discovery of a dead body in the hermetically-sealed deed box to which the was trustee; the second, one of the secretaries (are her actions completely believable? Would someone open the door to admit the person they knew was trying to murder them?). The characters are well-drawn. As for the plotting, Gilbert is first-class at misdirection—three possible solutions, and the author knows exactly what the reader is thinking at any given point. The detection is also first-rate: the exact balance of police routine (interesting in a way that Crofts and co. never were) and amateur detection.
Note also that the characters make reference to Chapter 16—like Carr’s characters, they know they are in a detective story.