Created by Michael Gilbert
(1912-2006)
WILLIAM “BILL” MERCER was a Detective Chief Inspector (and something of a rogue) when he first appeared in The Body Of A Girl (1972), a novel by acclaimed British writer Michael Gilbert.
It’s not a private eye novel — it’s more of a hard-boiled police procedural, but Mercer is definitely a piece of work: a promiscuous and physically imposing copper with longish hair and a noticeable scar running down the left side of his face, not overly concerned with rules or even the law. He’s also got a bit of a temper, and generally does not get along with others.
The author later described Mercer, in an intro to a 1997 collection of his stories, as being “prepared to bend any rule that gets in the way of his single-minded pursuit of his objective…. He was going to get his revenge for that scar, whatever the cost.”
And that was that. An engaging and even exceptional standalone. Except…
Seven years later, Mercer turned up as an ex-cop, apparently tossed for getting a little too handsy with a prisoner, and for bribery and corruption. He finds himself living in a dump of a flat in London with Shallini, a Pakistani woman, and scratching out a living as a fixer of sorts in three short stories which play out over an extended period of time.
All three stories were published in 1979, and cheekily titled “The Man at the Bottom,” “The Man in the Middle” and “The Man at the Top.”
In the first story, he’s at the bottom, working for a ruthless criminal gang run by a Mr. Henderson, and by the end of the final story, it’s still not quite clear if he’s been working undercover for the police the whole time, or not.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Lincolnshire, England, Michael Gilbert is generally regarded as one of the more talented mystery writers of the twentieth century, named Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America, awarded a Diamond Dagger for career accomplishments by the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain and honored for his lifetime achievement at Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention. Some critics have suggested that Gilbert would have done better commercially if he had stuck to just one sub-genre, but over a long and productive literary career he wrote it all: classic mysteries, police procedurals, spy novels, adventure stories, courtroom dramas and hard-boiled detective tales. He began as a solicitor in London, and for a while even served as Raymond Chandler‘s lawyer, writing crime fiction on the train between London and his home. He eventually moved to writing full-time, and ended up writing over twenty novels and more than 150 stories as well as several collections, and created several series characters.
UNDER OATH
- “(Michael Gilbert)’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.”
— One of Gilbert’s editors said after the author’s death in 2006
NOVELS
- The Body Of A Girl (1972; non-PI novel) | Buy this book
SHORT STORIES
- “The Man at the Bottom” (April 1979, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
- “The Man in the Middle” (May 1979, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
- “The Man at the Top” (June 1979, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
COLLECTIONS
- The Man Who Hated Banks and Other Mysteries, 1997) | Buy this book
Includes all three Bill Mercer short stories.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
