Michael Francis Gilbert (1912–2006) was an English solicitor and well-known author of crime fiction. His legal career was interrupted by World War II, when he served with the British Army in north Africa and in Italy. His work includes more than 30 novels and 13 collections of short stories, as well as stage, radio, and television plays. He was made a Commander in the Order of the British Empire, won the Lifetime Achievement Anthony Award, and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. He was a founding member of the Crime Writers Association, which later awarded him a Diamond Dagger.

He first started publishing in the late 1940s, so strictly speaking his writing falls outside the Golden Age although his style is very much of that era. His approach to plotting was inventive and his characters original. Smallbone Deceased (1950), one of his early books set in a law firm, is on H. R. F. Keating’s list of 100 best crime fiction books.

Chief Inspector Hazlerigg was Gilbert’s first series detective. Death Has Deep Roots was Hazlerigg’s fifth appearance, although his participation is minimal. Originally published in 1951 by Hodder & Stoughton, the title has remained almost continuously in print and the British Library included it in its reissue of classic British mysteries.

Followers of legal thrillers will recognize the scenario immediately: a defendant on trial for murder brings in new legal counsel at the eleventh hour and that attorney scrambles to salvage the case with the clock ticking inexorably toward a death sentence. Victoria Lamartine, a French émigré leading a quiet life as a hotel assistant, stood accused of the murder of Major Eric Thoseby with a motive based on events that took place in wartime France. With only a handful of people in the hotel at the time, the police quickly seized on her as the most likely killer.

Noel Anthony Pontarlier Rumbold, Nap for short, was convinced of Lamartine’s innocence upon their first meeting. His father, the senior partner in the firm, was more cautious but believed the defendant was being poorly represented. He arranged for a different advocate while he charged Nap to conduct the investigation that the police had not. Nap brought in a retired Army friend to assist.

Thus the story diverges in three directions. First it follows Nap and his inquiries in France, then it trails Angus McCann as he searches for answers within England, and finally it returns to the courtroom where Hargest Macrea, QC, blithely shreds the prosecution’s witnesses in a series of shattering cross-examinations. Macrea’s takedown of the pompous retired military officer who was plainly drunk on the night in question is epic. Gilbert’s experience as a lawyer comes into full play here. Fans of incisive legal jousting will want to read this book simply for Macrea’s performance.

While mixing timelines and points of view are common in contemporary crime fiction, they weren’t at the time the book was originally published, and it must have come as a surprise to the average reader. As Martin Edwards points out in the introduction to the BLCC edition, merging two different styles, a legal thriller with amateur detection, was something of a risk.

Gilbert pulls it off of course. In addition to fans of legal thrillers, readers interested in World War Two crime fiction will want to add this one to their reading lists. Lots of detail about the wartime experience of the French. Recommended.