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The Night of the Twelfth

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Nothing epitomises the changes in the detective story more than a comparison between Nicholas Blake's A QUESTION OF PROOF (1935) and Michael Gilbert's THE NIGHT OF THE TWELFTH (1976). Both are school stories, and in both the victims are children. In Blake's book, a boy is strangled-brutally and quickly-and thrown into a haystack. There is a credible reason behind the murder. In Gilbert's book, on the other hand, the child is tortured to death-murder for sadism, and off-puttingly graphic, the author "speaking quietly and with a lack of emphasis which seemed to make the words he was speaking more horrible".

As the book progresses, however, the tone gets lighter and more humorous-it is worth putting up with the highly disturbing opening chapters to reach Gilbert's amusing and well-drawn depiction of a prep. school setting, with believable students, and entertaining depictions of lessons and of games. One of the masters, Kenneth Manifold, is an undercover policeman, both keeping an eye on Jared Sacher, the son of the Israeli Ambassador, who could be under threat from the P.F.O., as "any servant of the Israeli State who lives or moves abroad is a target"; and attempting to discover which of the four well drawn masters is the sadistic murderer. The theme of intrusion of violence into the secure world of childhood-almost a passing of age ritual, mirroring the problems of adolescence-is well handled without cliché: "There's violence everywhere in the world. It's increasing and it will go on increasing. Nobody who is young today can expect to go through his whole life without meeting violence. By coincidence you have run up against it twice in the last few months. It could be useful, or it could be harmful. That depends on you." Gilbert sees schoolmasters as people who have never grown up, who have attempted to "lock the gate ... shut out the disturbing influences, and live for ever in an innocent cloud-cuckoo land among people who never grew up." Common problems of boarding schools crop up: corporal punishment is attacked as being "all bound up with sadism and sex"; while homosexuality / paedophilia is also ascribed to sadism. Michael Gilbert memorably draws a relentless portrait of inhuman evil, bringing about an ending surprising, depressing, and disturbing, with a genuinely evil and horrifying murderer disclosed after a genuinely edge-of-the-seat chase, "a game of blindfold chess ... played across the board of the English countryside"; the one flaw being that the true villain does not get all he or she deserves.

Despite the emphasis on psychology and characterisation, Michael Gilbert-as much a master of the genre as Nicholas Blake-does not neglect detection or clueing. The clues discovered by Ken Manifold relate directly to sadism, being clues of character and clues of opportunity; while those discovered through workmanlike police detection are believable and realistic clues.

An excellent school story, effortlessly combining the innocence of childhood with the depravity and cruelty of the adult world-one of his triumphs.

On the night of the twelfth of June, ten year old Ted Lister failed to return home after watching a local cricket match. When his body was found the next day, it was clear that he had been tortured before being murdered. The local police now had a total of three torture/murders, in similar circumstances, in one year, so an undercover police officer was made a member of the teaching staff at the small, exclusive, boy's prep school nearby. The school housed a number of the sons of well known or important members of government, and so the security was stepped up accordingly. This book is an old fashioned type of murder/thriller, with clues laid out to be followed and not too much graphic horror displayed. In all, it's a diverting read of the old whodunit type.

Michael Gilbert was a fine craftsman following in the tradition established by such as Christie and Sayers. This book is among the better ones he produced. It involves the kidnapping of young boys, their torture and murder. Suspicion focuses upon a boys preparatory school to which the action in the book turns. Characterizations of boys and masters are quite good with the suspense building as a subsidiary plot comes to the fore and it is discovered that one of the masters is in fact a police officer. Will the killer be caught before he strikes again? Read the book to find out.