I'd not heard of Michael Gilbert before reading this book and since I generally do not enjoy turning to face the strange, I had put off reading this despite the sunny cover design. But I am determined to plow through the backlog of these British mystery books I have piled up next to my side of the bed. I am still a member of that "club" that sends me a new book of a heretofore out of print book every month and it doesn't take long to get snowed under. PLUS, once I discover a new (good) author I feel compelled to check out other works of theirs which just adds to the stack(s).
Michael Gilbert squeezed a lot of living out of the time he was alive: born in 1912 in Lincolnshire, he went off to study law at London University, but dropped out because of money troubles. He then became a schoolmaster, saved up funds, finished law school and got his degree. He also published his first book during this time which was extremely popular (Close Quarters). Then WWII started and he joined the military and rose to the rank of major. He was captured in northern Italy in 1943. He, along with a few other British officers escaped and trudged over 500 miles to the south to cross Allied lines. Once the war was over he joined a law firm and practiced law there from the time he was 36 years old until he retired at age 71. He was married for almost 60 years, had five children, and wrote all his books while riding on trains to and from work every day. He wrote twenty-nine mystery books, fourteen collections of short stories and non-fiction books about law and (in)famous court cases. He was widely regarded by other mystery writers as top drawer. So why haven't I heard of him? Many of his books are now out of print, which is a shame because if they are as good as Sky High, they're worth reading.
Sky High was published in 1955 and is set in that time. The protagonist is Tim, a broody 30-something year old who uses his widowed mother's house (which is in the fictional village of Bimberley) as a base while he does secret work that takes him all over England, over to Europe and beyond. Is he a spy or an international criminal? He won't say. Tim never knew he father who was a Lt Colonel tasked with preventing the embezzlement of government property in Germany after the war ended, including weapons, when he died in a mysterious (and suspicious) explosion in Köln. Tim was also in the military but was sent to Palestine where he was quickly moved into "special forces" where he operated alone, learned how to hunt and kill particularly nasty people and specialized in planting and defusing explosives with highly complicated triggers. Apparently England's Palestine is not too unlike the U.S.'s Vietnam experience as Tim is frequently accused of having killed Palestinians ignobly. It isn't surprising that he keeps to himself. But he does have a soft spot for Sue who expresses her affection for him by cutting him cold and flirting with other people. He thinks that means she hates him and they have many unproductive conversations throughout the book--until the very last few pages when things finally go his way and words are not needed to express their mutual affection for one another.
Liz, Tim's mother, is a choir master who is very self-reliant and hates the vicar whom she believes is nasty and mean (in the British sense). Apparently people in small villages really go in for choir practice because everyone involved in this mystery is part of the choir, even two meddlesome teen boys who hang around dangerous places and spy on dangerous people. If only they would tell the GROWN UPS what they see...Another significant character is Major MacMorris who likes to flirt with Sue to piss Tim off. After the two hurl insults at one another, Tim is persuaded by his mother to apologize--the village is too small to tolerate stupid grudges, she tells him. So off Tim goes (not because he likes MacMorris--nobody does, not even Sue--but because he wants Sue to find out that he took the moral high ground. Not only does MacMorris accept the apology, he asks Tim for help, wanting to hire him as a sort of body guard. Apparently MacMorris has been getting threatening letters (he shows one to Tim), which tell him to "clear off if you know what's good for you". Tim doesn't think it means all that much (and suspects MacMorris wrote the letter himself to get attention), particularly since MacMorris claims to have no idea who it could possibly be from or what he did to piss someone off that much. Tim recommends taking the letter to the police and not worrying about it after that point. The whole time he is talking with MacMorris, Tim's hindbrain is on high alert, noticing the people in photos (all military sorts but different units, different wars...all very odd), the noises the house is making (the water cistern in the attic is clinking as it fills back up with water), and an oddly familiar acrid smell coming down the stairs into the living room. Oh well, best to forget all these weird things and go home--only to hear an astonishing explosion come from MacMorris's house as the top half of the house (including MacMorris's bedroom in which MacMorris was reading a book) is blown to smithereens. Well, it seems MacMorris really did have an enemy.
The local police are useless (or are they pretending to be useless to stave off panic and interfering?) and claim that MacMorris likely stored vast quantities of explosives in his attic, forgot about them, they decayed, and then they "went off." Yeah, that makes sense. (Explosives play a really big role in the lives of the people in this novel.) Tim and Liz don't believe it and set about to find out what is really going on. And in the course of their amateur sleuthing, they discover that Major MacMorris was no "Major", and that "MacMorris isn't his name: he was never in the army but was actually a two-bit actor that got insignificant non-speaking roles in small theaters (one role being a major), and supplemented his income by "fencing goods" for a really scary individual that special investigators within Scotland Yard have been trying to nab for years. As if that isn't enough, Liz and Tim uncover a notorious cat burglar who lives in their village who has been relieving wealthy old ladies of their heavy diamond necklaces for decades. Very quickly Tim and Liz make a lot of dangerous enemies and three times narrowly escape very creative and improbable attempts on their lives. But what the hell do either of those matters have to do with "MacMorris"?
But, as with all cozy mysteries, all the messy threads eventually weave together into a very delicate tapestry in which the bad are punished and the good are rewarded: all those odd casual remarks we read at the start of the book turn out to be important clues which tell us exactly what happened; all the crates of explosives found tucked into secret sheds and attics successfully clear out all the bad eggs thereby allowing us to sidestep the plodding police and the problematic criminal justice system. And, as I wrote above, Tim gets less broody and Sue who gets less prickly and both figure out how to be with each other without arguing.
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