One of our finest writers of mystery and detection: The best Classic Crime novels out now - Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert, Silence After Dinner by Clifford Witting, Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie

Daily Mail​

30-05-2025

Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert (British Library £8.99, 272pp)
A practicing lawyer who wrote his crime fiction on his daily commute into London, Michael Gilbert was at his peak when Smallbone Deceased was first published in 1950.
The plot is tantalisingly bizarre. An eminently respectable firm of solicitors is thrown into disarray when a corpse is found stuffed into a deed box.
With the police up against a conspiracy of silence, the challenge of solving the murder is met by the recently qualified Henry Bohun.
The insomniac Henry occupies the twilight hours by uncovering financial chicanery.
Gilbert stands as one of our finest writers of mystery and detection. For Smallbone Deceased, he is on top form.
Silence After Dinner by Clifford Witting (Galileo £10.99, 244pp)
An anonymous diarist writing at the time of the communist takeover in China confesses to a brutal murder. The scene then shifts to an English village, where the new rector has a missionary background in the Far East.
Among those sharing the Chinese connection is his predecessor's wastrel son and a wandering hell-fire preacher who, knowing too much, ends up in a watery grave.
The job of linking a rural outpost on the South Downs with a revolution on the other side of the world falls to the methodical Inspector Bradfield, who has to contend with small-minded bigotry in his hunt for a cold-hearted killer.
Joining the growing contingent of rediscovered mystery writers from the 1950s, Clifford Witting weaves an enthralling story. If the love interest stretches credibility, the leading characters are convincingly portrayed.
Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie (Harper Fiction £14.99, 256pp)
Agatha Christie had a genius for ringing the changes on the traditional mystery formula.
In Dumb Witness, reissued in a handsome hardback edition, Hercule Poirot receives a letter from an elderly lady who hints at an attempt on her life. Poirot is intrigued, not so much by the letter itself as by the fact that it was posted two months after the sender had died, apparently from natural causes.
The indomitable detective intrudes on a family at war, having discovered that the wealthy spinster had left all her money to her irritatingly fussy companion.
Was it the beneficiary of the will who had hurried the process or another of the household who had hoped for unjust deserts?
To add to the complications, a boisterous terrier, the dumb witness, may have contributed to the death of his mistress.