Game Without Rules

With its layered intrigue and arcane tradecraft, espionage is tricky to convey in short story form. In this 1967 collection of 11 witty, gritty Cold War tales, Gilbert gives a masterclass in how to carry it off with ingenuity and style. Slim Mr. Behrens, living with his aunt and keeping bees in a Kentish village, and stocky Mr. Calder, sharing a nearby cottage with the imposing Persian deerhound Rasselas, make quite the pair. Ostensibly retired, they are actually agents of the External branch, “a bunch of middle-aged cutthroats” on call to do dirty work for British intelligence. Gilbert keeps readers guessing on every page, alternating tweedy congeniality with stark brutality and understated emotion. Plots vary, from “On Slay Ground,” a taut account of a routine assassination gone wrong—or has it?—to “The Spoilers,” a byzantine blackmailing puzzler with a high body count that condenses a novel’s worth of twists and reversals into a few dozen pages.