The long and continuing literary career of Michael Gilbert (he published his first detective novel, Close Quarters , in 1947) illustrates both his diversity of occupational and institutional interests and many of the varieties possible within the form of detective fiction. He has written plays, television, and radio dramatizations, and three to four hundred short stories, in addition to his more than twenty detective novels. He was a founding member, in 1953, of the Crime Writers' Association. He has written a study of the famous murderer Dr. Crippen (Hawley Harvey Crippen) and edited The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes (1986). Although an Inspector Hazelrigg figures in a number of the early novels and a Detective Sergeant Patrick Patrella figures in some later novels and stories, Gilbert has no consistent series detective. More appropriately for his perspective, the focus is on the police as an institution, working out or contributing to the uncovering...