SNT 1988-08-20 Smallbone Deceased (Michael Gilbert).txt
Michael Gilbert - Smallbone Deceased
BBC Radio 4: Crime at Christmas
Broadcast: Monday 28th December 1987 @ 7:45 p.m.
Could such a thing really happen to the impeccably legal firm of Horniman, Birley and Craine? The use of hermetically
sealed deed-boxes was one of the finer points of the Horniman system: and it was scarcely to be expected that the body of
one of the firm's clients, Marcus Smallbone, should be found dead, after some weeks, in the Ichabod Stokes Trust Box.
Dramatised by Nesta Pain from Gilbert's 1950 novel.
With Hywel Bennett [Chief Inspector Hazelrigg], Dominic Guard [Henry Bohun], John Rye [John Coe], Jill Simcox [Miss
Cornel], Jenny Funnell [Anne Mildmay], Andrew Branch [Bob Horniman], Peter Howell [Mr. Birley], Susie Brann [Miss
Bellbas], Elaine Claxton [Miss Chittering], Andrew Alston [Sergeant Plumptree], Pauline Letts [Miss Tasker / Miss Mullett],
Manning Wilson [Sergeant Cockerill / Sergeant Rowls], Edward de Souza [Assistant Commissioner], Sheila Grant [Miss
Magoli / The Housekeeper / The Manageress], Brian Hewlett [Gissel / Hayman], Kim Wall [Dr. Bland], Alan Dudley [Mr.
Mason / Manifold], and Richard Durden [Hoffman].
Directed by Glyn Dearman
'Crime at Christmas' series consisted of:
1) "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" by Agatha Christie
2) "Whose Body?" by Dorothy L. Sayers
3) "The Governess" by Evelyn Hervey
4) "Smallbone Deseased" by Michael Gilbert
5) "Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy" by F. W. Crofts
6) "Miss Pym Disposes" by Josephine Tey
7) "Murder by Degrees" by John Abineri
Re-broadcast: 20th August 1988 @ 7:45 p.m. on BBC Radio 4: Saturday Night Theatre
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The two main Gilbert characters are:
Henry Bohun
He's an insomniac solicitor who uses his endless nights to solve crimes through his own deductive powers. He is a little bit
less aloof, willing to socialize some; his cases are, as befits his professional status, middle-class and domestic.
Chief Inspector Hazelrigg
He appears as a master of deduction, and is known to us primarily through his work. We know what he thinks about the
evidence, but almost nothing about him personally or psychologically -- and we do not need to. Historically-minded readers
also ought to recall that Hazlerigg was one of the earliest realistic British policemen in fiction; one has only to compare him to
the dumb-cops of Sayers and Allingham, or the aristocratic artistes of Marsh and Tey, to be struck by the difference in
professionalism.
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Book Review of 'Smallbone Deceased'
This is the best of Gilbert's early novels, which reflect life in immediate post-WWII England. It is set in the office of Horniman,
Birley, and Crane, a respectably stolid firm of London solicitors such as Gilbert himself joined after the war. We are drawn in to
the complicated business and social life of the firm, seen largely through the eyes of Henry Bohun, a newly qualified lawyer
struggling to learn the ins and outs of his new profession -- including the Horniman Self-Checking Completion System, a legal
filing scheme of hideous proportions.
Bohun is a person of many talents: he spent two years as a medical student, 18 months as an actuary, a stint as a research
statistician, a tour as a soldier during WWII, and finally has chosen a legal career because it is soothing, easy work. Now, my
mother would undoubtedly call Henry an "overeducated perpetual grad student", but I found him rather delightful (but then, I
was once an overeducated perpetual grad student myself). He's also afflicted with a disease called para-insomnia, which
means he never sleeps, but fills the night hours with long walks, reading, and a night-watchman job. Anyway, we quickly find
that Bohun is intelligent, resourceful, and (in a wonderful scene where his boss tries to intimidate him) perfectly capable of
looking after himself.
He'll need all those qualities to solve the crimes that are about to disturb the peaceful law firm. The body of a trustee is found
in one of the large filing boxes used by the Horniman Self-Checking Completion System. Everyone in the firm except Bohun
himself is under suspicion; Inspector Hazelrigg asks him to do a bit of discreet investigating of his co-workers, which our
Henry is only too happy to undertake (and the interplay between amateur and police is actually fairly credible). The plot
(which observes the scrupulous fair-play rules of the time) and characters just have a kind of simple perfection that make this
book a true classic.
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