My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The other reviews of this short book are not wrong: There’s plenty of problematic language, racism, classism, and all the other symptoms of the age in which it was written. (Although, thankfully, the anti-semitism we encounter early in the book is written off as foolish later in the book, which doesn’t redeem such attitudes but may suggest that our author was not among the hateful.)

Characterization, inner conflict, romance… all pretty scant by modern standards.

But, this isn’t a modern book. I selected it because it is commonly regarded as the first modern spy thriller, and as such worth a look. It reminded me of a Hardy Boys story, but with grown-up characters.

I’m not entirely convinced that this is the first spy thriller, as 1903’s The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers seems also to fall into that category and to deliver on a similar formula. A good argument can be made that 47 Ronin, the Nibelungenlied and Beowulf, Oedipus Rex, the Iliad and Odyssey were also proto-thriller stories. The idea of the action and adventure story goes way back, and I’m sure there are many more examples from many more cultures (I’ve yet to read the Hero with a Thousand Faces, so I can’t recite an extensive list – but Joseph Campbell reportedly can).

Getting past the social anachronisms that plagued the times, it is possible to enjoy the story, though some have described it more or less correctly as a single extended chase scene. And, let’s face it, some of the coincidences stretch the limits of our suspension of disbelief. That said, have you read many modern spy thrillers?

Some reviewers have commented that this books presents an interesting study of the attitudes of the pre-war years, and that may be true to an extent. However, at the time it was written the War had begun, and the author was aware of the outcomes of things that would have seemed less inevitable in the weeks before the war’s outbreak, the time in which the book is set. For a better look at perceptions before the War, see the above book by Childers. Or, if you’re really serious, read 1913 by Charles Emmerson.

Anyway, was this book worth three hours of my life? I think so. It’s informative to look back at the art and craft of suspense writing and see it’s earlier stages, if only to appreciate what has remained the same, to marvel at how much has changed, and to speculate on what the future of the genre might offer.



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