Spy collection accomplishes mission

This breakdown is interesting because in other ways, these stories play on the same themes: treachery and betrayal, often by the teller of the story, or the idea of heroism and our most strongly held beliefs. For example, Cowboy, the cool Vienna veteran, promises to teach the new hand everything he knows in Gayle Lynds’s “Max Is Calling.’’ What the young spy learns from his senior, however, has more to do with Cowboy’s cynicism than with tradecraft. Meanwhile the interrogator in David Morrell’s story of the same name is against torture on practical rather than moral grounds. He trusts his more subtle techniques, at least until the enemies’ increasingly sophisticated responses turn his own skills against him. And Charlie Becker, the hardened former Army Ranger in John Weisman’s “Father’s Day,’’ is a pragmatic mercenary, seemingly invulnerable, even as he longs to take his grandson on his knee.

Many of the stories also take advantage of the short form to insert surprise endings. Both Boston-based Joseph Finder and thriller star Lee Child indulge in this possibility, playing with our perceptions as they unfold little dramas. In “Neighbors,’’ Finder has the advantage of local color as he lays out a possible domestic terror plot downtown and in the parking lots of Logan. But Child’s narrator intentionally keeps the details vague, for everyone’s safety and for a bigger payoff in “Section 7(a) (Operational).’’