Michael Francis Gilbert CBE TD (17 July 1912 – 8 February 2006) was an English solicitor and author of crime fiction.
After becoming a schoolmaster at Salisbury Cathedral School, Gilbert returned to studying law, receiving his degree in 1937 and graduating with honours.
During the Second World War, Gilbert served with the British Army in North Africa and Italy with the Honourable Artillery Company.
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.
[6] Gilbert wrote 500 words a day during the 50-minute morning train trip,[3] preferring "a bit of hustle and bustle" to silence while writing.
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 IRA terrorists (Trouble).
In a typical example from Paint, Gold and Blood (1989), the protagonist has just received an unexpected letter from an old school friend and opens the envelope: A single note from a flute, or perhaps from a clarinet, had interrupted the rhythm of the tympani and the strings to announce the start of a new movement.
One of Gilbert's earliest works, Smallbone Deceased (1950), was included in crime-writer H. R. F. Keating's list, Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books.
Symons went on to state, "Yet there remains an impression that he is not quite content to be appreciated just as an entertainer, but that some restraint (legal caution, perhaps) checks him from writing in a way that fully expresses his personality".