Game Without Rules

Game Without Rules is a short story collection by the British crime and spy writer Michael Gilbert featuring his counter-intelligence agents Calder and Behrens. The first US edition was published in 1967 by Harper & Row, and the UK edition in 1968 by Hodder & Stoughton. A second collection of stories followed in 1982 under the title Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens.

Game Without Rules
First US edition 1967
AuthorMichael Gilbert
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
GenreShort stories
PublisherHarper & Row (US)[1]
Hodder & Stoughton (UK)[2]
Publication date
1967 (US)[1]
1968 (UK)[2]
Media typePrint
Pages243[1][2]
Followed byMr. Calder and Mr. Behrens 
First UK edition 1968

Stories

The book contains the following stories, most of which were originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine between 1962 and 1967:[3]

  • "Game without Rules"
  • "The Road to Damascus"
  • "On Slay Down"
  • "The Spoilers"
  • "The Cat Cracker"
  • "Trembling's Tours"
  • "The Headmaster"
  • "Heilige Nacht"
  • "Upon the King..."
  • "Cross-Over"
  • "Prometheus Unbound"
  • "A Prince of Abyssinia"

Principal characters

The collection features two of Gilbert's most popular characters, the amiable and elderly spies Daniel John Calder and Samuel Behrens.[4] The third member of the team is Mr Calder's Persian deerhound, Rasselas, a ferocious creature of at times distinctly superhuman intelligence.[5]

Literary criticism

The mystery critic Anthony Boucher called Game without Rules the second-best volume of spy short stories ever published, next only to Somerset Maugham's Ashenden.[6]

Kirkus Reviews considered the book to be a coup, a "stellar collection of short stories in a very difficult form — episodes and espionage". The reviewer thought the stories to be highly diverting and sometimes touching.[7]

The New York Times Book Review called the stories "entertaining and exciting", and found it hard to say which element was the most effective: the smooth ingenuity of plotting, the disconcerting combination of elegance and harshness, or the shock of amoral realism.[8] The New Yorker opined that Gilbert "has given us an evening of pure joy in this collection of tales".[8] And Life Magazine praised the author's almost perfect timing and surprise, elegance of language, and general sense of economy.[8]

In their encyclopedic Catalogue of Crime, Barzun and Taylor noted that while the story-telling is first-rate, "the genre seems to us more liable to repetition of effects than crime and detection".[9]

In a 1984 essay, George N Dove considered that one of the reasons for the lasting popularity of Calder and Behrens was the happy contrast between their outward appearance of elderly, quiet gentility and the pair's ability to take forceful action.[5]

Adaptations

A series of twenty radio plays by Gilbert under the general title Game without Rules was broadcast by BBC Radio 2 between October 1968 and January 1969, including the following derived from stories collected in this anthology:[10][11]

  • "The Spoilers"
  • "The Road to Damascus"
  • "Cat Cracker"
  • "Cross-Over"
  • "Heilige Nacht"
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References
  1. "British Library Item details". primocat.bl.uk. Retrieved 12 September 2019.
  2. "British Library Item details". primocat.bl.uk. Retrieved 12 September 2019.
  3. Gilbert, Michael (1967). Game without Rules. New York: Harper & Row. Copyright page.
  4. "[Obituary] Michael Gilbert". The Daily Telegraph. 10 February 2006.
  5. Dove, George N (1984). "Michael Gilbert". In Bargainnier, Earl F. (ed.). Twelve Englishmen of Mystery. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University popular Press. pp. 175–176. ISBN 0-87972-250-9.
  6. "[Obituary] Michael Gilbert". The Times. 11 February 2006. p. 75.
  7. "Game Without Rules". Kirkus Reviews. 7 June 1967.
  8. Gilbert, Michael (1968). Game without Rules. London: Hodder and Stoughton. [Introductory material].
  9. Barzun, Jacques; Taylor, Wendell Hertig (1989). Catalogue of Crime (Revised and enlarged ed.). Harper & Row. p. 623.
  10. "Game Without Rules". BBC Genome. 28 October 1968. Retrieved 27 September 2019. (link is to the first programme in the series)
  11. Gilbert, Michael (2009). Cooper, John (ed.). The Murder of Diana Devon. London: Robert Hale. Introduction and appendix. ISBN 978-0-7090-8924-7.
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