#smallbone deceased

[e-b-reads]

"A friend in the enemy's camp," said the Assistant Commissioner. "It's quite a good idea. Only for heaven's sake don't 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."

- Smallbone Deceased, by Michael Gilbert

[j-august]

John had, by now, reached that well-defined stage in intoxication when every topic becomes the subject of exposition and generalisation, when sequences of thought range themselves in the speaker's mind, strewn about with flowery metaphor and garlanded in chains of pellucid logic; airborne flights of oratory to which the only obstacle is a certain difficulty with the palatal consonants. "Horniman, Birley and Craine," said John, "is not one firm but four firms. It is a quadernity. It is the Gordon Selfridge of solicitors, different departments to suit all tastes and purses. For the humble but well-meaning citizens of Streatham or Brixton, Mr. Brown and Mr. Baxter labour unceasingly, resting not day nor night. For the hard-faced, stern-browed moguls of commerce and industry our City offices are ever open, and the warm hearts and subtle brains of Mr. Bourlass, Mr. Bridewell and Mr. Burt beat in a mighty diapason, and their cunning fingers are never still - here underwriting a charter party, there endorsing a Bill of Exchange sans recours; and if all else palls, why, bless me, they can always fill in the time between lunch and tea by forming a limited company. In Piccadilly, those gilded darlings of fortune, Osric Rasmussen and Emmanuel Oakshott, pin carnations to the palpitating bosoms of a horde of comely divorcees and spend their time, or such time as they can spare from race meetings and first nights, in drawing fantastic leases of flats in Half Moon Street and shops in the Burlington Arcade--" "Two more whiskies," said Henry. "What do we do in Lincoln's Inn?" "I've never really found out," said John, "but it's all most terribly gentlemanly."

Michael Gilbert, Smallbone Deceased

[e-b-reads]

Books of the month: Feb 2026

Ah, February! Not a terrible reading month or anything, but I did feel like I jumped around between books a little more than is usual for me. Nothing wrong with that, I'm still reading, it just means it takes longer for me to check things off as complete, which occasionally makes me antsy. (And then I pick up something quick, like a reread or a short mystery, and read it in about two sittings, and that settles me some.)

Here's some of what I read in February that stuck with me!

Murder in the Trembling Lands (Barbara Hambly): Wrote about this briefly here (in a post mostly about another book I liked less). A fun, seasonal (Mardi Gras!) reread of the latest book in a favorite series. I love the insanity of the plot colliding with the Mardi Gras scene in 1840s New Orleans. I also love all the recurring characters <3

Barrayar (Lois McMaster Bujold): Her writing is just generally very good and enjoyable (kind of how I feel about Hambly's too, tbh!) and while at times I was thinking, "This isn't sticking with me the way I thought it might," at other times I found myself getting lunch in my kitchen while reflecting on how all the men killed in war are some mother's son... so it did stick with me some, is what I'm saying. Also Cordelia is very satisfyingly badass in this.

System Collapse (Martha Wells): I'm now all caught up on the Murderbot books! Murderbot continues to discover the power of media <3 I am very curious about the worldbuilding in these and how much backstory we're ever going to get, or if we as readers pretty much have a grasp on how everything works in the Corporation Rim world now. What was there, pre-CR? Who is the alien contamination from, anyway?

The Murder on the Burrows (E. C. R. Lorac): Of course I need to document my continued efforts to read all of the Inspector Macdonald books. This is book 1 in the series, which was kind of fun to read after reading so many others (including some published 20 years after this one was). Said a little about it here.

Wolf-Speaker (Tamora Pierce): This book especially, with its pretty self-contained plot and setting in a single valley, drove home my adolescent love of this series. As I wrote in this post, after reading this book I went to class, and walking across my university campus, I saw two crows fly across the sliver of sky visible in the gap between two tall academic buildings, and for a moment it really felt like I should be able to mentally follow and communicate with them. Oh to be an adolescent girl coming into her wild powers and making friends with animals everywhere.

Smallbone Deceased (Michael Gilbert): If you see me post about mid-20th century mysteries and want to read one but don't want to get drawn into a series, try this one! (Technically I think Gilbert did write others with some of the same characters, but you don't need to read them.) It was really good - the mystery itself was pretty good, but more than that I thought that the character interactions and dialogue, especially among all the characters working in the law firm where a body is found, were deftly done. Kind of like Murder Must Advertise, possibly also from some authorial familiarity with the type of setting.

[j-august]

Sometimes, indeed, he went so far as to visualise himself as an archangel, a rotund St. Michael, armed with the sword of Dymond and defended by the shield of Green, protecting the helpless from the assault of the massed powers of Darkness, those arch-fiends, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue.

Michael Gilbert, Smallbone Deceased

[j-august]

This was typical of Inspector Colley who was elderly, soured by lack of promotion, and extremely methodical. He knew the necessary moves to a hair, and made them all. His reports were models of conciseness and monuments to a staggering lack of imagination.

Michael Gilbert, Smallbone Deceased

[frimleyblogger]

Smallbone Deceased

A truly classic #CrimeFiction book from Michael Gilbert, reissued by @BL_Publishing #amreading

A review of Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert Originally published in 1950 and now reissued as part of the excellent British Library Crime Classics series, Smallbone Deceased is the fourth in Michael Gilbert’s Inspector Hazelrigg and is a must-read for all fans of Golden Age detective fiction. It has many of the elements that make up a good yarn, a seemingly impossible murder, misdirections…

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[j-august]

"And this was where the Horniman office system signally justified its founder. In no other office - in no other solicitors' office in London, I think - would the disposal of a bundle of papers and files and account books have caused the murderer any embarrassment."

Michael Gilbert, Smallbone Deceased

[j-august]

"I say, what's it all about? Are we supposed to have murdered the old boy on a Saturday morning?" "Well--I--" "Not a bad idea at that," said John. "The office would be nice and quiet. Supplies a motive too. I mean, any client who comes to see you on a Saturday morning is really asking for trouble, isn't he?"

Michael Gilbert, Smallbone Deceased