Customer Reviews

Death has Deep Roots (Inspector Hazelrigg)

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Death Has Deep Roots (1951) is a classic of the courtroom drama-a tense and gripping thriller with excellent characterisation and an ingenious plot.

Victoria Lamartine is on trial for the murder of her supposed lover, Major Eric Thoseby, whom she is accused of having stabbed one night in March. It seems to the police and the prosecution a `sealed box' mystery, for there are only five suspects: three hotel staff-members, and two guests, so that one of them must have done it-and Mlle. Lamartine the likeliest suspect. However, as Macrea, counsel for the defence, proves, "the whole thing [is] like a jigsaw puzzle which has been half done by an inexpert child. Any bit that seems to fit has been left in. Any bit that doesn't fit has been disregarded." All of the suspects have connections to either the French Underworld or Underground, so that, although this is a murder committed in England, it is in fact "the murder of a man who had done most of his war service in France, by a French girl, whom he was alleged to have met in France, in a hotel kept by a Frenchman with an Italian waiter who had spent all of his war service in France."

It is in France that the deep roots lie-the deep roots which must be uncovered to expose the dirty truth. It is amongst "the hate and the fear, the hysterics and the exaggeration and the heroism" of occupied France-"an unknown and rather frightening landscape ... where it might be necessary-where it might be most necessary and desirable-to be able to kill yourself quickly" that the pasts of Major Thoseby, of Victoria Lamartine, and of M. Sainte the hotel manager lie. It is in France that "forces [are] at work, forces which ... had already reached out and touched [Nap] at the extremities of their huge, opposed organisations"-gold smugglers and the Sūreté. And it is in post-war France-a country which "is not a very happy one at this moment", as Gilbert vividly depicts-that Nap Rumbold, the lawyer for the defence who appeared in other Gilbert novels, "fight[ing] a long, dirty, blackguarding campaign in which we shall use every subterfuge that the Law allows, and perhaps even a few that it doesn't", searches for the truth, his efforts alternating with scenes of the courtroom drama. These thriller elements are well used, and do not stick out like a chewed-off ear. Although Nap complains that "[American magazines] have one habit that I find irritating. They start a story, get you really interested in it, and then-what happens? You turn the page and find you are in the middle of quite a different one... That's exactly what's happening here, don't you see? I started out reading a murder mystery. It seems to have turned into a gold smuggling melodrama. What's the connection between the death of Major Thoseby last March in the Family Hotel and a large-scale gold smuggling racket?", it soon becomes clear that all the elements tie neatly together, forming a cohesive and extremely satisfactory whole, in this, one of the classic post-war detective stories.

When the body of former secret service agent, Major Eric Thoseby, is found in a rather seedy hotel in London, the blame immediately falls on his ex lover, French wartime resistance member, Victoria Lamartine, who is discovered standing over the body. In the ensuiung trial, the prosecution plays up the supposition that Thoseby was the father of Victoria,s child, who is now deceased. Victoria vehemently denies this, claiming that the child's father was actually a British agent, Lieutenant Julian Wells, a very young and inexperienced agent who was sent to France in 1943, captured by the Gestapo and listed as missing ever since. During Victoria's trial, the prosecution keeps hinting at Gestapo involvement but, despite the innuendo, the solution is amazingly simple with little mystery at all, so, despite the adulations of the critics on the back of the book, I didn't find this to be a terribly fascinating read.