Death in Captivity

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

Death in Captivity is a mystery novel by the British crime writer Michael Gilbert, first published in the United Kingdom in 1952 by Hodder and Stoughton and in the United States by Harper & Brothers. It was Gilbert's sixth novel and, unlike his previous ones, does not feature Chief Inspector Hazlerigg in any way. Nor is it set in Gilbert's usual locales of London, the English countryside, or France. Instead, while it has many of the elements of the classic detective story, it is also a gripping novel of mounting suspense that takes place in a 1943 prisoner of war camp for British officers in northern Italy— it was the first of Gilbert's numerous works that would feature suspense and danger as much or more as elements of detection.

Plot

A murder has been committed, but not in the typical enormous country house in the English countryside of the Golden Age of Detection. Instead, a Greek prisoner of war interned in a camp for British officers is found dead in an underground tunnel that a number of the officers have been tirelessly working on in secret in the hope of fleeing the camp.

Reception and Appraisals

Anthony Boucher of the New York Times said that "the first 1952 book to reach this reviewer's desk is one which wouldn't disgrace any Best-of-the-Year list" and went on to say that it concerned:

...an important murder trial, with real understanding of courtroom psychology and technique. But the camera eye of the author constantly flashes from this... to the efforts of two likable and believable amateurs detectives who are striving to assemble last-minute evidence for the defense; and their adventures, involving maquisards and collaborators from the past, and gold-smugglers and secret agents of the present, make a thriller as wildly exciting as the courtroom scenes are suavely persuasive. It's hard to recall any technical tour de force of fusion quite so admirably integrated as this. Mr. Gilbert is one of the most accomplished leaders of the new British school of murder writing.

A much later appraisal comes from Barzun and Taylor's encyclopedic Catalogue of Crime:

There have been many mystery tales based upon the activities of the French Resistance; few have been good, and fewer stand up to current rereading. This is one of the very best... Scene of the crime is a small London hotel. Counsel of both sides are excellently portrayed. A gripping tale: one of the author's triumphs.