Stay of Execution (short story collection)

Stay of Execution is a collection of mystery stories by the British thriller writer Michael Gilbert, first published in 1971 by Hodder & Stoughton.

Gilbert, who was appointed CBE in 1980, was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers' Association.

[1] The Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master in 1988[2] and in 1990 he was presented Bouchercon's Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Independent said of the book in 2006:Gilbert had a fondness for amusing but unscrupulous pirates... and an entirely practical, indeed sceptical, view of the workings of the law.

It was typical of his humour that the two stories in his excellent collection Stay of Execution (1971) in which rascally solicitors "get away with it", "Back on the Shelf" and "Mr Portway's Practice", were written in the first person.