Then his sedate existence is overturned when his upstairs neighbour asks for help. A middle-aged man, Hannoy, has made his fortune in Africa and is living in London and getting thoroughly bored with his new life. It is set in Britain just before World War I.
And so that is the genesis of one of the first spy novels. This little volume is the result, and I should like to put your name on it in memory of our long friendship, in the days when the wildest fictions are so much less improbable than the facts. During an illness last winter I exhausted my store of those aids to cheerfulness, and was driven to write one for myself. At the beginning of this book there is a note from the author to a friend: MY DEAR TOMMY You and I have long cherished an affection for that elementary type of tale which Americans call the 'dime novel' and which we know as the 'shocker' - the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible.
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