Inspector Hazelrigg Books

This novel followed ‘Close Quarters’ and once again features Inspector Hazlerigg. It is a gangster suspense thriller about the post-war black market. There is robbery, murder, and smuggling in a volume that contains all of the ingredients of a first class tale, with Gilbert’s particular trademarks of dry humour and wit, and an obvious knowledge of the subject written about with fascinating and revealing detail and description.

Michael Gilbert's suspense stories are invariable entertaining and always illuminating, whether the field is law, international relations or, as here, high finance. He brings the hitherto dry world of finance to comprehensible and fasinating life. Well drawn characters and lots of action make an irresistible combination.

Mass-Market Paperback--From the Lancer Suspense Library (72-737). Complete and Unabridged.

This is a detective and trial story with a complicated plot that will grip the reader. Victoria Lamartine is on trial for the murder of her supposed lover, whom she is accused of having stabbed. There are only five suspects including Lamartine. But evidence that doesn’t fit the police theory of the crime has been ignored, whilst all of the damming evidence is presented in isolation. Intriguingly, whilst the murder was committed in England, all of the suspects somehow have a past connection with France and its wartime underground. However, there now appears to be links to gold smuggling and it is not immediately clear how all of the different pieces of evidence fit together. As always, Gilbert neatly takes the reader to a satisfying final twist and conclusion.

Once you start to follow Mr. Wetherall, headmaster of a London high school, in his one-man war on crime and the black-market, you will find it hard to leave him until victory is his.