Editing Michael Gilbert (section)

==Writing career==

Gilbert's writing career spanned the years 1947 to 1999, with his final work being ''Over and Out'' (published in 1998). The genres his fiction novels enveloped included [[police procedurals]], spy novels, short stories, courtroom dramas, classical mysteries, adventure thrillers, and crime novels. Following his death, ''[[The New York Times]]'' quoted one of Gilbert's publishers regarding his writing style: "Michael was an exceptionally fine storyteller, but he's hard to classify. He's not a hard-boiled writer in the classic sense, but there is a hard edge to him, a feeling within his work that not all of society is rational, that virtue is not always rewarded.".<ref>Douglas Greene of Crippen & Landrau, quoted in ''The New York Times'', 15 February 2006.</ref>

Unlike many other fiction writers of the mystery and crime genre, Gilbert did not make use of a single recurring character. His works, however, did include characters that would appear irregularly: [[Inspector Hazlerigg]]; [[Patrick Petrella|Inspector Petrella]]; [[Chief Superintendent Morrissey]]; [[Inspector Bill Mercer|Detective Chief Inspector Mercer]], [[Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens]]. Posthumously, four collections of his short stories were published. By 2016, his works consisted of 30 novels and approximately 185 stories in 13 collections.<ref>Introduction by John Cooper to ''[[The Murder of Diana Devon and Other Mysteries]]'', Robert Hale, London, 2009, page 7.</ref> In addition to his novels, Gilbert wrote several stage plays along with numerous radio and television plays.

Gilbert was known for writing only during his five-times-a-week commute by train between his home in [[Kent]] and Lincoln's Inn. He said that doing so allowed him to "carry out a full and normal day's work as a solicitor, and to devote the evenings and weekends to my family".<ref>''[[Amateur in Violence]]'', [[Ellery Queen]], editor, [[Davis Publications]], New York, 1973, page 4.</ref> Gilbert wrote 500 words a day during the 50-minute morning train trip,{{r|Guardian obit}} preferring "a bit of hustle and bustle" to silence while writing. Stating that commuting was a "perfectly natural thing to do", he mused that after retirement he would "have to find a railway journey every morning ... I'd have to go somewhere by train in order to continue writing".<ref name="bbc20221125">{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6WPnx_DWQQ |title=1976: Meet the COMMUTERS |date=2022-11-25 |type=YouTube |publisher=BBC |orig-date=1976-10-04}}</ref>

While Gilbert's earlier works were set in courtrooms and the offices of lawyers, his later works depicted police investigations and criminal acts. Some of Gilbert's novels were set in a boys' boarding school. Others were about a serial thrill killer (''The Night of the Twelfth''); a television action hero and military advisor to the ruler of an Arab sheikdom (''The Ninety-Second Tiger''); suspense in Communist Hungary just prior to the 1956 uprising (''Be Shot for Sixpence''); municipal corruption in a seaside town (''The Crack in the Teacup''); Etruscan art relics (''The Family Tomb''); and [[Irish Republican Army (1922–69)|IRA]] terrorists (''Trouble'').