They Never Looked Inside
They Never Looked Inside is the second novel by the British mystery writer Michael Gilbert. It was published in England by Hodder and Stoughton in 1948 and in the United States by Harper & Brothers in 1949 as He Didn't Mind Danger. It was Gilbert's first publication in the States. It is also the second novel to feature Gilbert's early recurring character, Inspector Hazlerigg. The events take place mostly in post-World War II London, in either 1945 and '46 or 1946 and '47—it is difficult to put an exact date on them. They are told by an omniscient third-person narrator but most of the scenes involve either Inspector Hazlerigg and the workings of the Metropolitan police department or the activities of a recently musted-out Army vetern, Major Angus McMann. It was the first of a number of novels Gilbert would write over his exceptionally long career in which organized gangs and criminal masterminds figure, both in London and less often in Europe.
Upon its publication in the United States Anthony Boucher, the mystery critic of the New York Times, called it "a convincing and warmly realistic suspense story," and that it was "a first novel to make you look forward hopefully to more Michael Gilbert." [1] A few years later, however, although still admiring it, he said it was "a Manning Coles novel of blithe adventure"[2]
It is, in actuality, a combination of both styles, as Gilbert, still a relatively inexperienced writer, had not yet found the voice he would later use successfully in most of his words, a spare, inornate style that was both urbane and straightforward, with a surprising amount of underlying grimness to it.