Michael Gilbert, born 1912, is a British writer of both fictional mysteries and thrillers. He was a lawyer in London for many years and at one point had Raymond Chandler as his client. He has had a very long and very productive writing career, beginning with his first novel, Close Quarters, in 1946 and continuing through 1999 with Over and Out. He has written almost every sort of mystery and thriller, perhaps spreading himself too thin over too many fields to achieve the reputation that many critics feel he deserves. He has written police procedurals, spy novels and short stories, courtroom dramas, classical mysteries, adventure thrillers , crime novels, and almost every possible combination of these, all with the same competence and dry, detached wit.
Among his very best books are two collections of short stories about two gentlemanly but exceedingly hard-boiled fictional British counterspies, Mr. Calder and Mr. Berens, "middle-aged cut-throats" as one of their adversaries bitterly referred to them.
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