This is another great novel by Edward Phillips Oppenheim, the prolific English novelist who was in his lifetime a major and successful writer of genre fiction including thrillers and spy novels, and who wrote over a 100 of them. When David Granet asks for a place to stay „within a twenty-mile radius of either Nice or Cannes”, he does not anticipate the trouble that he finds at the Manoir of Lady Grassleyes. The Lady of the manor is dead when he arrives, and the will is disp...
A best-selling author of novels, short stories, magazine articles, translations, and plays, Oppenheim published over 150 books. He is considered one of the originators of the thriller genre, his novels also range from spy thrillers to romance, but all have an undertone of intrigue. He was the earliest writer of spy fiction as understood today, and invented the „Rogue Male” school of adventure thrillers that was later exploited by John Buchan and Geoffrey Household. This 192...
Originally published in 1913, „The Great Impersonation” is probably the most famous spy novel of all time. This tale is full of murder, crime, confused identity, blackmail, war, romance, politics, and there’s even a ghost... In 1913, a German spy assumes a dead Englishman’s identity and infiltrates British society as a sleeper agent, but when he falls in love with the Englishman’s wife and his Hungarian ex-lover recognizes him, he must decide how to deal with the two women ...
John Strangeways lives the life of a country Gentleman farmer with his puritan brother in the hills of Cumberland. Far from the world of cities and noise he lived the clean, healthy, out-of-door life. When actress Louise Maurel’s car breaks down near their farm, she is forced to seek refuge with the misogynist brothers. Love ensues. Life no longer was quite the same to him, and in a short time he followed her to London. The coming of an unsophisticated though well educated,...
Edward Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946) was the earliest writer of spy fiction as understood today, inventing the „rogue male” school of adventure thrillers and writing over 150 novels of all sorts. In „The Golden Beast”, a woman curses her lover’s father, a baron, who had her gamekeeper father hanged. Years afterward, three of the baron’s descendants disappear in a manner that baffles Scotland Yard, appearing they were the victims of that ancient curse. Written in 1925, with...
An engrossing tale of financial intrigue, full of shadowy characters and shady dealings from the author of mystery and espionage thrillers E. Phillips Oppenheim. Phineas Duge, leader of a group of American millionaires who work financial deals together, suspects his colleagues of crooked dealings, and tricks them into signing a document that gives him power over the group. During a struggle the document is stolen from Duge, and everyone is pulled into a frantic search to re...
Stirling Deane has sold the Little Anna Gold Mine which he discovered in South Africa early in his career. The sale has made him a rich man and the head of the company to which he sold the mine. His is engaged to Lady Olive Nunnelly, and is the envy of all of society. Deane is threatened with ruin when a old enemy – Richard Sinclair- shows up in London with what appears to be a legitimate prior deed to the mine. After a meeting with Deane, the man is found murdered and the ...
This mystery that takes place in 1947 in Nice about conflicting political goals between an American and a Chinese. Shortly thereafter, the granting of independence to the Philippine Islands by the United States, Japan attempts to seize them by force. When the Japanese attempt to invade the newly freed islands, their entire fleet is destroyed by a single battleship of the United States Navy using a weapon that concentrates and amplifies electric currents in the earth’s atmos...
The six stories in Part I of this book trace the early career of Peter Benskin. He is a public school graduate with a small private income who joins the police force in London. After an early success he transfers to Scotland Yard where he becomes a detective. He is successful in solving several difficult cases but is hampered at times by his ethical feelings towards criminals who have been coerced or forced to commit crimes. He allows the „innocent” to escape, while he purs...
This is a very clever collection of linked stories by E. Phillips Oppenheim written in 1913. Algernon Knox, pretty young, dapper, seemingly silly, has failed at everything. Although wealthy, he fails when he stands for parliament. By chance he becomes involved in a blackmail against his uncle, who is a diplomat. Knox foils the plot, and a new career is born, the gentleman detective. In some ways, the young man carries out increasingly dangerous and cleaver missions against ...
Welcome to 1922 and E. P. Oppenheim’s „The Evil Shepherd”. A businessman is found stabbed through the heart, the obvious suspect his partner: Oliver Hilditch, a cold-eyed fellow with a paper-thin alibi. Francis Ledsam is a defense barrister and is congratulating himself on a brilliant performance which has just seen Oliver Hilditch acquitted of murder. His ego is pricked by Margaret Hilditch confessing to him that Hilditch was guilty of crimes far more monstrous than murder...
Julian Orden, son of a British aristocrat attends a dinner party and meets Catherine, a young woman of mixed antecedents – British and Russian. She is entrusted with important documents. When she is suspected of being a spy and arrested, she saves herself by giving the papers into the keeping of young Orden. A beautiful, intelligent young woman – is she a traitorous spy or a patriot? These two characters become caught up in a plan by the leaders of the working people of Ger...
The adventures of Mr. Stanely Brooke, „The Deliberate Detective”. E. Phillips Oppenheim’s detective Stanley Brooke unearths the strange and criminous underbelly of London, but the greatest challenge he tackles is how to capture the heart of his beautiful but grim partner, Constance. This detective contributed to the foundation of the genre’s history. The collection also includes the following stories: „The Rescue of Warren Tyrrwell”, „The Princess Pays”, „The Other Side of ...
„The Double Traitor” is an espionage novel set in the days leading to the first World War. The main character is Francis Norgate, an aspiring British diplomat who falls in disfavor with his superiors for defending a woman while stationed in Berlin. The resulting scandal causes Norgate to be recalled. On the way home, he meets a German gentleman, Selingman, who claims to be a crockery salesman. But, Selingman is not what he appears to be. Disillusioned by the English governm...
Lord Evelyn and a group of seven like-minded esthetes make up „The Ghosts” a cabal of social arbiters, of whom the mere mention is regarded as a faux pas. They are imbued with almost mystical power in setting tastes and trends and behavior for the members of Society in London in 1908. Desperate for stimulation „The Ghosts” embark on a risky program of wealth redistribution... other peoples wealth. Meanwhile, a spurned aspirant to their club, the American debutante Sophy Van...
E. Phillips Oppenheim, writing as Anthony Partridge, in 1912. A curious tale in three parts. „The Court of St. Simon”, by E. Phillips Oppenheim tells the story of Monsieur Simon with his consort Josephine, who lives in the demi-monde of Paris, consorts with criminals and artists, and exacts „contributions” from various evil-doers in the „Court of St. Simon” an underground tribunal of, for, and by, the criminal class. One evening, he brings along with the jaded youth Eugene ...
Wrapped in furs until only my nose and eyes were visible, I was walking along the Nevski Prospekt in St. Petersburg one winter’s evening, and almost involuntarily turned into the Dominique, that fashionable restaurant which, garish in its blaze of electricity, is situated in the most frequented part of the long, broad thoroughfare. It was the dining-hour, and the place, heated by high, grotesquely-ornamented stoves, was filled with officers, ladies, and cigarette smoke, whi...
This is a very early novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim from 1897. The wealthy and bored Lord Hildyard, Marquis of Esholt, is on a yachting tour with a group of friends, including his kept lover, Pauline Owston. When Hildyard spies an apparently uninhabited island, he slips off the ship in search of adventure. In the middle of the night, he hears wonderful violin music and finds a young and beautiful girl, Bertha, playing in the forest. She is accompanied by a cruel and misshap...
Edward Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946) was an English novelist, in his lifetime a major and successful writer of genre fiction. This novel is an Oppenheim classic from 1919 about a high society villain: characteristic of Oppenheim’s typical works, with the characters living in luxury, and a very flowing and exact story. Much of Oppenheim’s work possesses a unique escapist charm, featuring protagonists who delight in Epicurean meals, surroundings of intense luxury, and the re...
Alfred Burton, a smooth-talking salesman, is having a perfectly ordinary day on the job when he stumbles across a strange plant with green leaves and a cluster of queer little brown beans hanging down from them in an old house. The virtue of the beans is that he who eats one shall see nothing, think nothing, say nothing but the truth. Alfred Burton has a well-meaning, rather ordinary wife who becomes unendurable to him, and he falls in love with a charming girl who would ha...
„The Box with Broken Seals” is a thrilling cat and mouse murder mystery following the narrative of Jocelyn Thew and the English Service. This skillfully written and an exciting espionage story of intrigue, unfolding in the Oppenheim’s best style. The reader will follow with avidity the daring moves of Thew from the time he sails from New York on the „City of Boston,” accompanied by a dying man and a special nurse in the person of Katharine Beverley, a society girl who is un...
Phillip Romilly is a poor art teacher in London, half-starved, both mentally and physically. His cousin, Douglas, has everything and even buys Beatrice, Philip’s fiancée. He strangles Douglas, throws him in the canal, and assumes his identity. Douglas had booked passage to America for the next day, so after a pleasant sea voyage Phillip arrives at the Waldorf Hotel in New York as Douglas Romilly. Philip’s career in New York is filled with incident. On his wedding day, he is...
„The Black Box” is a series of loosely connected short stories detailing the adventures of Sanford Quest, world’s greatest criminologist. The story starts off in New York City, travels to England, Egypt, and around the world to San Francisco, then into the wild west of New Mexico. There are two main plot lines which merge into one along with romance mixed in with the ever present danger. Melodramatic, episodic, supernatural. It’s all great fun and Oppenheim keeps the action...
This late novel of E. Phillips Oppenheim begins as the „Train Bleu” pulls into the railroad station in Monaco. It’s a leisurely spy fiction tale set in Monaco as various members of aristocracy from different countries plus one vacationing American woman find themselves involved with international intrigue. The bulk of the book consists of members of the leisure class drinking cocktails, playing baccarat, and generally spending time in Monaco’s elite clubs. Oppenheim’s work ...
