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Even Murderers Take Holidays and Other Mysteries

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First edition

Even Murderers Take Holidays and Other Mysteries is a collection of mystery stories by British thriller writer Michael Gilbert, first published in 2007 by the British company Robert Hale and unpublished in the United States. It contains 25 previously uncollected stories, as well as an introduction by John Cooper and an appendix. The first twelve stories feature Inspector Petrella, one of the many recurring characters that Gilbert created throughout his long career of writing both novels and short stories. Its next story has Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens, and there are four stories about Inspector Hazlerigg. Gilbert, who was appointed CBE in 1980, was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers' Association. The Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master in 1988[1] and in 1990 he was presented Bouchercon's Lifetime Achievement Award.[2] The locales are mostly set in London and its environs. A number of the stories, such as "Somebody" and "Old Mr Martin", have an unexpected grimness about them. "Michael was an exceptionally fine storyteller, but he's hard to classify," said one of his American publishers after his death. "He's not a hard-boiled writer in the classic sense, but there is a hard edge to him, a feeling within his work that not all of society is rational, that virtue is not always rewarded."[3]

Stories in order

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References

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  1. ^ "Michael Gilbert (obituary)". The Telegraph. 10 February 2006. Retrieved 13 November 2012.
  2. ^ "History of Guests of Honor". Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. Archived from the original on 25 September 2007. Retrieved 5 July 2014.
  3. ^ Douglas Greene of Crippen & Landrau, quoted in The New York Times, 15 February 2006
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This article incorporates material from the Citizendium article "Even Murderers Take Holidays and Other Mysteries", which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License but not under the GFDL.