Checkpoint Charlie

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Grateful acknowledgment is made to Davis Publications for permission to reprint the stories listed from the following publication:

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine: “Joe Cutter’s Game” (which served as the basis for “Charlie’s Game” in this volume), July 1976

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine: “Charlie’s Shell Game,” February 1978; “Checkpoint Charlie,” May 1978; “Trust Charlie,” June 1978; “Charlie’s Vigorish,” August 1978; “Challenge for Charlie,” October 1978; “Charlie in Moscow,” November 1978; “Charlie in the Tundra,” January 1979; “Charlie’s Dodge,” March 1979; “Passport for Charlie,” July 1979; “Charlie’s Chase,” October 1979.

Charlie, who waddles and struts and gloats his way through the stories in this collection, is a character who delights me because of his contradictions. Charlie inhabits a violent world — the CIA — yet he is nonviolent; indeed, he’s inept with weapons and scorns them. (“Any fool can shoot people.”) He is old and fat, in a genre that conventionally calls for sleek young heroes. He is thunderingly conceited, an amiable know-it-all, in a world that normally allows no room for arrogant prima donnas. He is clever and ratiocinative in a world best known for its blundering screw-ups. He is an iconoclast in an organization that demands conformity. He insists upon working alone, even though the “company” that employs him is one that prizes team spirit and effort. He is intuitive and resourceful in the midst of an organization peopled by dogged data-gathering computer types.

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