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MR. CALDER AND MR. BEHRENS by Michael Gilbert

MR. CALDER AND MR. BEHRENS

By

Pub Date: April 1st, 1982
Publisher: Harper & Row

Twelve stories, published originally in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (19671981), and featuring Gilbert's gentlemanly British spies--whom it's not always easy to tell apart. (The main difference between these two quite faceless gents is that Calder is the one who travels with Rasselas, a Persian wolfhound.) Among the Calder/Behrens missions: exposing well-placed Lady Lefroy as a spy; figuring out if a scientist is leaking secrets via his columns on bridge; infiltrating a peace-movement that is being programmed by subversives; tracing a mad rumor about imminent nuclear war with China; defusing a charismatic preacher who's the dupe of yet more ""subversives""; preventing a crazie from bombing the Houses of Parliament; unmasking a mole; digging up Nazi secrets; and foiling an IRA assassin. True, few of the stories are plausible--and the humor is sometimes dry to the point of invisibility. But, for those who enjoy leisurely, literate espionage vignettes: a tidy assortment.