Patrick Petrella

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

Patrick Petrella is a police detective created by the British mystery writer Michael Gilbert who appears in six books published between 1958 and 1993, in both novels and numerous short stories, and is probably the best-known of the half-dozen or so recurring characters that Gilbert wrote about throughout his long career. In his first appearance, in the police procedural Blood and Judgement, Petrella is a "probationary" Detective Sergeant at the (fictional) Q Division of the London Metropolitan Police. By the final novel in the series, Roller Coaster, he has become a Superintendent. In Blood and Judgement he is young and, apparently, not very experienced in his non-professional dealings with women. He lodges at Mrs. Catt's, who cooks large meals for his youthful appetite. He drinks very little and is a dedicated bridge player. Very little personality or background come through in the first book; he is apparently fit and athletic but beyond that we know nothing of his physical appearance. We are told early that he is considered by his superiors to be something of a maverick with a streak of somewhat unruly independence; as the book progresses he is shown to have a very strong and very stubborn sense of right and wrong—although he is a dedicated policeman to his core, with a strong sense of belonging to a brotherhood, he nevertheless goes behind his superior's back to unearth evidence that he feels is being unwarrantedly ignored. The only other thing we learn about him in this book, although he is the protagonist who appears in nearly all of its scenes, is that his surname is Spanish.

Petrella's character combines an erudite and cultured background with a fiery ("Mediterranean") temper. He was born to a Spanish policeman father, from whom he gets his last name, and an English mother who gave him his first name. He was educated in Madrid, England, Beirut and Cairo. Michael Gilbert attributes reading the poem Who Has Seen The Wind? by Christina Rossetti, during a boring church sermon, as the inspiration for the first Petrella mystery.

BBC Radio broadcast two series of radio plays adapted from the novels in 2007, with Petrella played by Philip Jackson.