Anything for a Quiet Life

Anything for a Quiet Life and Other New Mystery Stories is a collection of short stories by the British writer Michael Gilbert published in the United Kingdom by Hodder & Stoughton in 1990 and in the United States by Carroll & Graf the same year. All nine stories had previously appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. All of them take place in a fictional English coastal town called Shackleton-on-Sea, which is situated in the south of England not far from Brighton and Hove. They feature the activities of a small law firm called Jonas Pickett, Solicitor and Commission for Oaths, recently started by Pickett, a retired lawyer from London. There are three other main characters, his partner, Sabrina Mountjoy, their secretary, Claire Easterbrook, and a general handyman, Sam Conybeare, "a mountain of a man who had once performed remarkable feats of strength and daring in a circus."

In the first story Mr. Calder, one of the two protagonists of Gilbert's Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens and Game without Rules, makes a brief appearance. In the same story, Pickett also meets a police superintendent named Queen, as well as a headmaster named Major Appleby. Inspector Queen was a character in many of the Ellery Queen mystery novels by Ellery Queen, and Inspector Appleby was the lead character in many novels by Michael Innes.

Stories in order

• Anything for a Quiet Life, page 7