"Code Duello" is a 1968 science-fiction novel by Mack Reynolds, published as one-half of an Ace Double, with the other side being "The Age of Ruin" by John M. Faucette. "Code Duello" is a 140 page story that mixes genres, and is part of a wider series of stories featuring the "United Planets", as was "The Rival Rigelians", that I read a few months ago.
"The Rival Rigelians" was a complex work dealing with sociopolitical development of entire planets, written through the lens of someone who was brought up as a socialist. So when I started reading "Code Duello", I was expecting perhaps another serious work. And what I got was...a comedy heist novel that mixes espionage and western genres, set in a planet that is a reconstruction of renaissance Florence.
The planet Firenze is stuck in its development, due to the interference of a subversive organization. "Section G", the intelligence arm of the United Planets, wants Firenze to develop faster, because of a backplot involving "The Dawn Worlds", a hidden, superadvanced civilization that threatens humanity. All of which is backstory, because the main point of this story is that the team that is sent to Firenze consists of a strongman, a bullwhip expert, a woman who looks like an eight year old girl, and a man who is supernaturally lucky. They pose as normal tourists, and use their unusual abilities to get into wacky espionage adventures. Reynolds' social and political interests do resurface, as it turns out that the subversives, the "Engelists" don't even exist, but are used by the nobility to keep the people in line by inventing a menace. Also, everyone is constantly being challenged to duels, thus the name.
This book was more fun, if less serious than "The Rival Rigelians". It showed how diverse the genre of science-fiction was in the 1960s, that even one author, a few years apart, could write books of such different contents and textures. I enjoyed this book, although part of that is due to its short length: if it was longer than about 140 pages, the premise and gags would have probably worn thin relatively quickly.