Blood & Judgment (1959) by Michael Gilbert
Michael Gilbert has written an amazing amount of novels in a career spanning over 50 years. I know him primarily through his well plotted espionage books. This one, however, is a very traditional British police procedural starring his Detective Sergeant Petrella.
Its a fairly good read but you can tell that it's an early career novel in that the plot is extremely tidy. I enjoyed his use of cutting edge technologies like fingerprinting and the aqualung.
2 comments:
Is this the first book with Petrella? I don't think he intended to make him a regular character, but he's ended up in quite a few of Gilbert's novels. I've got a collection of short stories that start out with Petrella as a child and end with his first assignments in the Metropolitan force. I can't remember the name right now, but it came out later. I love Michael Gilbert's understated toughness. He has characters who are truly badass and he is able to express it so quietly. He reminds you that the British have had criminals a lot longer than us North Americans!
I don't know for sure if this is the first one with Petrella but, yes, he is definitely the lead in a bunch of his books.
The cool thing about the police in this one is that, while they are generally nice, they will break out when necessary. For example, Petrella gets piss drunk one day on duty and his underlings see him on the street, take him home and cover for him.
Post a Comment