Death In Captivity by Michael Gilbert

Death in Captivity, set in a WWII Italian P.O.W. camp, intrigued me as a new take on the locked room mystery. A dead man is discovered in a small escape tunnel, which takes four men to open, within an enclosed area and a small group of men whose movements are constantly watched. How is it possible he was murdered?

Goyles, Byfold, and Long are among several British prisoners on the so-called "escape committee", tasked with digging a tunnel underneath Hut C, one of the dozen buildings of the small Apennine mountain camp, not 200 yards in any direction. They have avoided detection, but the Italians are aware there are several tunnels - which they turn a blind eye to unless they get too close to the outside wall. To leave over the wall, or approach too close, they will shoot to kill. With constant watchfulness from the sentry towers, guard checks, and roll calls, there is enough security to prevent the men from getting into too much trouble.

One morning, the diggers find a dead man at the far end of the tunnel, buried under the dirt of a collapsed roof, his fingers raw from digging, his lungs filled with sand. The man was rumoured to be an informer, who was segregated in another building for his own safety - how did he end up in the tunnel? It's decided to give up a less useful tunnel and transfer the body there. When found by the Italians, it's proven he was murdered well before being placed in the tunnel - but with four men needed to open the entrance, how did it happen?

Goyles is given the task of detecting a solution.

When an informer is killed, intelligence quickly replaces him with another - but who is it?

They increase digging shifts until the news arrives: Mussolini has fallen and the Fascists are out. With the Carabinieri leaving, and a fear the prisoners will be killed rather than set free, it is time to mobilize the escape.

This is much more of a P.O.W thriller in the style of The Great Escape, a new theme after the war. Author Michael Gilbert himself was a prisoner in an Italian camp, and he adds a relaxed atmosphere of freedom in the camp for cards, sports, and theatrics, but everyone knows if you are one step out of line it means certain death.

All the tension in this is directed to the escape plans, including an ill-advised run at the wall in a blackout. The solution to the murder is a small part of this prison break thriller, which also exposes the traitors in their midst.

This was titled The Danger Within in the US, and was filmed in 1959 starring Michael Wilding and Richard Attenborough.

The British Library Crime Classics has republished this in 2019, and it's widely available.

Other novels of the Alps:

Avalanche

Horizon

The Lovers

1952 / Tradeback / 260 pages