The Family Tomb

One of these is his other well-known novel Death in Captivity, a mystery based on Gilbert's time in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp during World War II.

The protagonist, Robert Broke, a middle-aged Englishman and expert on Etruscan art, lives in Florence in a state of semi-suspension, having never fully recovered emotionally from the sudden deaths of his wife and child in England several years earlier.

The rest of the book dwells on attempts by a devoted band of British expatriates to free him and their experience with the Italian legal and political system that weaves its mesh around Broke, and vicious counter-moves by Mafia gangsters who hope to ensure that Broke's arrest will lead to his conviction so that the shadowy deeds taking place on Professor Bronzini's estate are left in peace.

As is frequently the case with Gilbert books, there is a violent dénouement with a satisfactory number of corpses—which leads to a newly found interest in life on the part of Broke.

The New York Times described The Family tomb "eminently satisfying",[1] while Kirkus Reviews deemed it, "A tedious, cluttered and overelaborated enterprise" full of "farinaceous nonsense".