gadetection

Gilbert, Anthony

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Anthony Gilbert (1899-1973) - Pseudonym for Lucy Beatrice Malleson; also wrote as J. Kilmeny Keith and Anne Meredith.

Prolific British mystery writer, a woman writing under a man's name, whose most famous creation is lawyer-detective Arthur G. Crook. For many years Gilbert's identity was kept secret, and most readers assumed that the author was a man. Distinctive for Gilbert's novels is skillful plotting, lively supporting characters, entertaining dialogue, and clever action without exaggerating violence. She wrote straight fiction - mostly with a Victorian flavor - under the pseudonym of Anne Meredith.

Mrs. Warren said speculatively, "I wonder why it is people always regard marriage as something comic - unmarried people, I mean. Married ones don't."

Her husband opened one eye to murmur, "Of course not."

"What do you mean?" They turned towards him with spontaneous unanimity of feeding sheep.

"What I say. Married people don't rag about it because either marriage is so rotten you can't forget about it, or else you're so much accustomed to it you don't remember you are married. Like that fellow in Kipling's yarn who had gone about naked for so long he didn't even realise he was naked. And burst into tears when he saw himself in a mirror." --from The Body on the Beam

Lucy Malleson was born in Upper Norwood, in London. She was educated at St. Paul's Girls' School, Hammersmith, London. Malleson worked as a secretary for the Red Cross, Ministry of Food, and Coal Association. Ignoring her mother's plans to make her a schoolteacher, she fulfilled her own ambition as a writer. In 1925 she published her first book, The Man Who Was London, under the name J. Kilmeny Keith.

After seeing John Willards' play The Cat and the Canary, Malleson decided to try her skills at the thriller genre. She made her debut as mystery writer in 1927 with The Tragedy at Freyne. The story introduced Scott Egerton, a rising young British political leader, who then solved crimes in some ten novels. In The Body on the Beam (1932) Egerton examined the death of a young woman of dubious reputation, whose body is found hanging in a third-rate lodging-house. A young man is arrested, but Egerton approaches the problem from a different angle and builds up an equally strong case against another man from the woman's past, and traps the real criminal.

"I like the vulgar items," said a young man called Beresford, in a placid drawling voice. "I find 'em inspiring." And he chanted softly:

There was me and the missus and half-a-dozen kids.

And nothing in the bottle but the bung.

Rosemary laughed. "Barrie was quite right; it's natural to be vulgar. And if we can't be vulgar by proxy I don't see how we're ever to accomplish it at all." (from The Body on the Beam)

Malleson's first Arthur G. Crook novel, Murder by Experts, appeared in 1936. It gained an enormous success and Malleson dropped Egerton. During the years Crook developed from rather unattractive character into a strong and popular personality, although he is not generally the protagonist of the story. Frequently Crook comes to help when a woman or a children is in peril, as in Missing From Her Home (1969), where a nine-year-old girl vanishes while on a trip to the supermarket. In And Death Came Too (1956) Crook helps Ruth Appleyard, who is involved in several questionable death cases. A Question of Murder (1955) was a about a young woman who is suspected of murdering a boarder. As in the television series Columbo, starring Peter Falk, Crook is badly dressed and murders usually are unaware that they are soon in a trap.

Between the years 1934 and 1962 Malleson published 20 straight novels and one mystery (Portrait of a Murderer, 1934) under the name Anne Meredith. She also wrote a number of radio plays which were broadcast in Great Britain and overseas. Her autobiography, Three-a-Penny, appeared in 1940. Her short stories were published from the 1940s in several anthologies, and such periodicals as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and The Saint. Among these was 'The Mills of God', a poignant and heartbreaking crime story about abortion (EQMM, April 1969). Also the short story 'Fifty Years After', written under the name of Anthony Gilbert, dealt with the theme. "Salts of lemon was a common way out of trouble for girls who'd fallen into it. Easy to come by - you said you wanted it to clean a straw hat - a penn'orth or two-penn'orth over the counter and no questions asked." (from Ellery Queen's Murdercade, 1976) Malleson was a founding member of the British Detection Club. She died on December 9, 1973.

Series characters: M. Dupuy, the politician Scott Egerton, and the beer-drinking Cockney barrister Arthur G. Crook, an overweight detective like Nero Wolfe, who drives in Rolls Royce and comes on stage when it is time to solve the case. Crook is addicted to bright brown, off-the-rack suits, his office is chaotic and is situated at the top of a shabby building in a disreputable part of the town.