Generally considered to be one of Michael Gilbert's best books, this tale of murder and chicanery at a respected law firm in postwar London has continued to delight readers since it was first published in 1950. When the body of Marcus Smallbone, an important client at the firm of Horniman, Birley and Craine, is found stuffed into a hermetically sealed deed box, only solicitor Henry Bohun is above suspicion because he is so newly arrived at the firm. In fact, the astute Inspector Hazlerigg enlists Henry's aid as an undercover sleuth, a job he is ideally suited for because of his keen intellect and boundless energy. Henry suffers from a form of insomnia which enables him to sleep no more than two hours a night, giving him ample time to indulge in amateur detection while shouldering his workload at the office. It's at first assumed that the firm's recently deceased founder, Abel Horniman, had committed the crime, but when another murder follows it becomes apparent that the killer is still very much at large. The mundane but telling details of the firm's daily operations are incorporated into a tightly plotted and wryly humorous narrative, in which suspects abound and clues are fairly planted. Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor called it "Gilbert's masterwork" and H.R.F. Keating hailed it as "a classic of the genre," including it in his list of the 100 best crime novels of all time.

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