(no subject)
Feb. 13th, 2022 09:22 pmA few weeks ago, I read Michael Gilbert's Death in Captivity, but I couldn't post about it until now because I was immediately after consumed with the urge to make ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti watch The Great Escape with me and we didn't finish that until last night, and I don't know how to talk about Death in Captivity except at least somewhat in context of The Great Escape because that film has been burned into my brain and heart since I was ten.
...ANYWAY.
Death in Captivity is a mystery, of sorts, set in a POW camp in Italy; the British officers in the camp are attempting construction of an escape tunnel, on the understanding that a.) escape is their duty generally but also b.) an Allied invasion of Italy is imminent and there are a variety of scenarios for what will happen to the POW camps once that happens, none of which are great.
Unfortunately, they have just found a dead body in their half-completed tunnel -- a Greek POW that nobody liked and that everyone thought was a plant or a spy -- which provides some conundrums, since the Italian officers running the camp will surely notice that someone's missing, which means they have to provide a plausible explanation for his death without giving away their escape tunnel. Eventually the protagonist, a quiet intellectual POW, gets dispatched to do some sleuthing to answer some key tunnel- and informer-related questions, and ends up investigating the murder more or less on the side; it's not anyone's first concern, except inasmuch as it relates to the safety of the tunnel and the escape.
It's a really fascinating sort of sideways slant on the concept of the murder mystery, and it's also a really compelling portrayal of a POW camp. (Michael Gilbert himself was a POW, and did escape from a camp on the eve of the Allied invasion of Italy, along with two friends to whom he dedicated the book -- an earned self-insert if any fictional detective ever was.) As aforementioned, I've seen The Great Escape many times and when you have a story about a lot of people in a POW camp digging a tunnel in an attempt to get as many people out as possible it's very difficult not to play compare/contrast, but the most interesting distinction for me is the fact that in The Great Escape they're all there in that particular camp because they are Dedicated Escapers: everyone in that film absolutely committed to escaping, not just because it's their duty but because they, personally, hate being behind bars and feel a compulsion to Get Out regardless of the personal risk. There's no mistrust or worry that any of them aren't sufficiently behind the project -- in fact the challenges go the other way around, when people are Too desperate to escape and get into trouble as a result.
In Death in Captivity, on the other hand, a solid contingent of the POWs aren't particularly excited about the prospect of risking their lives in an escape attempt. Gilbert has a really deft and sympathetic hand with the various human ways that people find to pass the time in captivity, many of which have nothing to do with escape at all (the camp theater troupe's production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street provides a major comic subplot) and also the various small tensions that arise as people's coping mechanisms inevitably come into conflict: like, on the one hand, yes, it's very worthy of those slightly obsessive guys in the hut over there to be digging that tunnel all day and night, and on the other hand, they stole our roulette board to prop the tunnel up?! Without asking?!? We were using that?!?
(Another thing that really struck me ( is very spoilery )
Anyway. I liked it very much; in other news The Great Escape remains a fantastic movie.
genarti watch The Great Escape with me and we didn't finish that until last night, and I don't know how to talk about Death in Captivity except at least somewhat in context of The Great Escape because that film has been burned into my brain and heart since I was ten. ...ANYWAY.
Death in Captivity is a mystery, of sorts, set in a POW camp in Italy; the British officers in the camp are attempting construction of an escape tunnel, on the understanding that a.) escape is their duty generally but also b.) an Allied invasion of Italy is imminent and there are a variety of scenarios for what will happen to the POW camps once that happens, none of which are great.
Unfortunately, they have just found a dead body in their half-completed tunnel -- a Greek POW that nobody liked and that everyone thought was a plant or a spy -- which provides some conundrums, since the Italian officers running the camp will surely notice that someone's missing, which means they have to provide a plausible explanation for his death without giving away their escape tunnel. Eventually the protagonist, a quiet intellectual POW, gets dispatched to do some sleuthing to answer some key tunnel- and informer-related questions, and ends up investigating the murder more or less on the side; it's not anyone's first concern, except inasmuch as it relates to the safety of the tunnel and the escape.
It's a really fascinating sort of sideways slant on the concept of the murder mystery, and it's also a really compelling portrayal of a POW camp. (Michael Gilbert himself was a POW, and did escape from a camp on the eve of the Allied invasion of Italy, along with two friends to whom he dedicated the book -- an earned self-insert if any fictional detective ever was.) As aforementioned, I've seen The Great Escape many times and when you have a story about a lot of people in a POW camp digging a tunnel in an attempt to get as many people out as possible it's very difficult not to play compare/contrast, but the most interesting distinction for me is the fact that in The Great Escape they're all there in that particular camp because they are Dedicated Escapers: everyone in that film absolutely committed to escaping, not just because it's their duty but because they, personally, hate being behind bars and feel a compulsion to Get Out regardless of the personal risk. There's no mistrust or worry that any of them aren't sufficiently behind the project -- in fact the challenges go the other way around, when people are Too desperate to escape and get into trouble as a result.
In Death in Captivity, on the other hand, a solid contingent of the POWs aren't particularly excited about the prospect of risking their lives in an escape attempt. Gilbert has a really deft and sympathetic hand with the various human ways that people find to pass the time in captivity, many of which have nothing to do with escape at all (the camp theater troupe's production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street provides a major comic subplot) and also the various small tensions that arise as people's coping mechanisms inevitably come into conflict: like, on the one hand, yes, it's very worthy of those slightly obsessive guys in the hut over there to be digging that tunnel all day and night, and on the other hand, they stole our roulette board to prop the tunnel up?! Without asking?!? We were using that?!?
(Another thing that really struck me ( is very spoilery )
Anyway. I liked it very much; in other news The Great Escape remains a fantastic movie.
