Death in Captivity

"[1] A murder has been committed, but not in the usual confines of the secluded English country house so typical of the Golden age of detective fiction.

Just as he is about to finally reveal who has committed the crime, word comes that the Italians, who have now officially left the war, are about to turn the camp over to German forces.

The final chapters of the book relate the adventures of three escaped officers as they attempt to traverse the Italian countryside and reach the safety of the Allied lines.

An appraisal some years after its publication comes from Barzun and Taylor's encyclopedic Catalogue of Crime:A superb, though harrowing, story of murder in a prisoner-of-war camp in northern Italy towards the end of the last world war.

The skill with which suspense is kept up during a series of trivial incidents related to oppression and plans of escape is equaled only by the management of a large number of characters, Italian and English.