Ring of Terror

(CC) Photo: Jerry Bauer
Michael Gilbert on the back cover of Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens, 1982

Ring of Terror is a mystery novel by the British crime writer Michael Gilbert, first published in the United Kingdom in 1995 by Hodder and Stoughton and in the United States by Carroll & Graf. It was Gilbert's 28th novel and the first of three featuring his final set of recurring characters, Luke Pagan and Joe Narrabone.

Plot

It is set in Gilbert's usual locales of London and, to a lesser degree, the English countryside. By the end of the book, Luke has been asked to join the recently formed MO5 (later renamed MI5), a counter-intelligence agency, and Joe, in spite of losing part of a leg to a terrorist's bomb, has secured a good job as a security guard.

Appraisal

An appraisal some years after its publication comes from Barzun and Taylor's encyclopedic Catalogue of Crime:

A superb, though harrowing, story of murder in a prisoner-of-war camp in northern Italy towards the end of the last world war. The skill with which suspense is kept up during a series of trivial incidents related to oppression and plans of escape is equaled only by the management of a large number of characters, Italian and English.