The Family Tomb (Gilbert novel)

(CC) Photo: Jerry Bauer
Michael Gilbert on the back cover of Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens, 1982

The Family Tomb is a 1969 suspense novel by the British mystery and thriller writer Michael Gilbert published by Harper & Row in the United States in 1970 and the year before by Hodder and Stoughton in England as The Etruscan Net. It was Gilbert's 14th novel and takes place entirely in Florence, Italy, a few years after the great flood of the Arno river in 1966 caused serious damage to that city. Like many British of Gilbert's Establishment standing in life, he had a great fondness for Italy and set a number of his books there, including Death in Captivity, a harrowing mystery based on his time in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. Except for Captivity, however, most of the other books have only a portion of their events taking place in Italy—in The Family Tomb, however, everything transpires within a few miles of the Ponte Vecchio and central Florence.

Plot

Unlike many of Gilbert's novels, which have plots within plots and apparently disparate themes that eventually merge, The Family Tomb is a straightforward suspense story involving only members of the British colony in Florence, a wealthy Etruscan professor who excavates and sells ancient art objects, Italian police and judiciary officials, assorted politicians and lawyers, sympathetic Italian working-class people, and two sinister Mafia figures.

The protagonist, Robert Broke, a middle-aged Englishman and expert on Etruscan art, lives in Florence in a state of semi-suspension, having never fully recovered emotionally from the sudden deaths of his wife and child in England several years earlier. He runs a bookstore/art gallery and is on friendly if somewhat distant terms with the other members of the British colony. He also is attached to his youthful housekeeper and her elderly father, a marvelous craftsman at restoring broken antiques. Broke is invited to an elaborate luncheon at the country estate of Professor Bronzini, where excavations into ancient Etruscan tombs are on-going. Broke encounters the very different members of Bronzini's peculiar household, and is shown around some of the excavations and ancient tombs. Without quite realizing it, he catches a glimpse of something that he shouldn't have seen—apparently an ancient Etruscan's helmet—and from that point onward his well-being is in danger.

Within a few days the elderly craftsman who works for Broke has been killed by an apparent hit-and-run driver late one evening—and Broke himself is arrested and put into jail as being the perpetrator. The rest of the book dwells on attempts by a devoted band of British expatriates to free him, an expert appraisal of the Italian legal and political system as they weave their mesh around Broke, and vicious counter-moves by Mafia gangsters to ensure that Broke's arrest will lead to his conviction, leaving whatever shenanigans are going on at Professor Bronzini's estate in the clear. Fortunately for Broke, some Italian officials are less committed to gaining a plea of guilty than others, an extremely clever local lawyer has taken up his case, and a gilded youth with some special talents who is the adopted son of Professor Bronzini, along with a giant Corsican handyman who works for the Professor, are also on his side. As is frequently the case with a Gilbert book, there is a violent dénouement with a satisfactory number of corpses—which leads to a newly found interest in life on the part of Robert Broke.

Reception and/or Appraisal

The New York Times and Kirkus Reviews had very different appraisals of it:

The New York Times: There is a bit more to be said, however, for the non–series novel, a more exacting task, demanding the development, each time, of a new structure, new images, new milieu, fresh basic characterization. That brings us to England's Michael Gilbert, a most creative author who has followed this latter course with unusual consistency of quality. The most gratifying feature of Mr. Gilbert's latest, THE FAMILY TOMB (Harper & Row, $5.95), is that the story is eminently satisfying and there is not the slightest intimation that the author has rigged the action. Englishman Robert Broke, following the death of his wife, has settled into the uneventful operation of an art gallery in Florence. Uneventful, that is, until the archeological excavations of the renowned scientist, Professor Bronzini, pique his listless curiosity. Bronzini is probing the extensive tombs of a 5th century pirate, and valuable relics may be expected. Only a faint suspicion that all is not well engages Broke's mind, until a friend (a restorer of relics), is murdered. Then Broke becomes involved in both the murder investigation and the fascinating vagaries of Italian politics.

Kirkus Reviews: A tedious, cluttered and overelaborated enterprise about Etruscologist Robert Broke, living in Florence; Professor Bronzini who is opening up some tombs; and Tina, Broke's youthful housekeeper whose father—a too fine craftsman—works for the Professor until Broke is accused of accidentally killing him. The Professor is "working some sort of fiddle" but so may be his adopted son—or the Mafiosi—and there's lots of other farinaceous nonsense. Unless you're very elderly, like Broke, "an anachronism," you won't dig the dig.