Harold MacGrath (1871–1932)

At the first chapter, I had high hopes for this book. I thought it would be a ripping yarn in the style of old movie serials - plenty of melodrama and cliffhangers. Then things changed. The first big indicator of how bad it would get was Hargreave’s decision to pull Florence out of her hidden boarding school and install her in his house. At that point the Black Hundred had no idea he even had a daughter, much less where she was. So to bring her into the open as a known quantity was just show more stupid and purely a device for future emotional blackmail of the reader. I hate manipulation like that. If you’re going to manipulate me as a reader, do it with subtlety or an a way that is fun. Not like this. If the writer thought a bit creatively, he wouldn’t have needed Florence as the sole leverage for the bad guys. Alas, he went for the easy mark and it was a big let down. That action did give me a big clue about someone’s identity though and once I had that figured, the novel fell even flatter.

As I got deeper into the book, the overly positive tone took all the suspense and doubt out of the plot. Anytime the Black Hundred threatened Florence, she was saved (mostly by Norton) or she threw herself into a scheme to buy time to be saved. For a while there I had hope that Florence would be more than a feminine object to be rescued, and have a brain in her head, but alas, she wasn’t. The novel is a bit too early for that. There’s even a line in there that because men have this need to protect and defend, they can’t abide the suffragette movement because that might give women some control over their own lives. Mercy!

Anyway, there just isn’t any real suspense in this book at all, although there is some nice foreshadowing and implied menace, things just never materialize with any bite. Whenever the Black Hundred got an advantage, it was nullified or neutralized by an equal opposite advantage for the good guys. The bad guys are supposed to be all organized, sophisticated and smart, but mostly they’re a bunch of bumblers whose every scheme turns sour. The good guys have lots of suspicions and are subjected to a lot of attempts to snatch Florence, but they never get much wiser either. A simple code phrase could have eliminated a lot of back and forth possession of Florence, but that would have made the book a lot shorter and made sense, so of course McGrath didn’t use it. And naturally there are secret passages, a cave, spy holes, followers of followers, and a really great fake mustache emporium because, damn, everyone had a disguise at the ready for clandestine meetings.

Anyway...if you’re curious about the beginnings of the thriller genre, it’s worth checking out, but the story is incompetent; in execution, plot and characterization. show less

From Manila to upstate New York is the setting for this World War I era adventure/spy novel. Penned by the prolific Harold MacGrath, The Yellow Typhoon, alas, has begun to fade into the lost memories of bygone generations. Too bad, because not only is MacGrath a sure-handed prose stylist but he plots out an intriguing story that is almost impossible to put down without finishing.

One-fifth of the book is set in the American colony of the Philippines right at the beginning of America's show more involvement in the Great War. Written right after the war, in 1919, MacGrath's picture of the German enemy is similar to that found in other adventure stories of the era. (Having just finished Talbot Mundy's description of German treachery in India and Arthur O. Friel's narratives of German enslavement of the Amazon, I can say that MacGrath tops them both in making for one of the most villainous images of the Prussian "Hun" imaginable.)

But what makes the story work is the extent of it. Not only does it begin in the lush tropics of Manila, it then literally sets sail across the Pacific, landing in San Francisco, then traveling by train to New York City, and then finally ending in upstate New York. All the time, MacGrath's hero, John Mathison, a naval lieutenant commander, works to bring the blueprints describing a new feat of naval engineering to the proper authorities before the Germans steal it. The kink in the plan is that Mathison cannot merely turn over the blueprints. He also wants revenge on the German spies for a murder they have committed. His mission, then, is twofold, get the blueprints home and lure the Germans into revealing their part in the murder.

Quite a good read, this. MacGrath is worth looking at in more detail, I think. show less

The story is a pretty typical 1910 romantic adventure, but when I saw the first of the Andre Castaigne illustrations (full colour, full-page glossy plates) I was impelled to read just a little bit. Then I got to Castaigne's depiction of the effect the first glimpse of the title rug has on the protagonist. Our hero (George P.A. Jones) is kneeling on the floor in the act of unrolling the carpet. He wears an expression of dumbfoundment as magical creatures, houri and djinn, are evoked in his show more imagination by the precious carpet's unique workmanship and glorious history and explode into a swirl of painted glory. At that point I decided to finish the story. It's an amoral tale of robbery, receiving of stolen goods, and artefact smuggling. If you can get over all that, you might enjoy the book. But the illustrations are glorious. show less

Looking at the publication date, 1915, it's clear that this novelization of a film scenario was greatly influenced by Pearl White's The Perils of Pauline and, perhaps, White's follow up, The Exploits of Elaine. Just call MacGrath's book, "The Foolishness of Florence." For like the White cliffhangers, Million Dollar Mystery reproduces a damsel in distress so stupid she seems to try to put herself in danger. And the stereotyped villains are there as well, a secret organization of Russian show more master criminals, the Black Hundred. Oh, and one of the heroes is actually tied to the train tracks with an approaching locomotive bearing down on them!

MacGrath has written better works. This one falls prey to its own mysteries and even confuses itself. All this is readily apparent at the end of the next to last chapter and the beginning of the last, where the author actually forgets the action he is carrying over from one chapter to the next.

All of that should have been expected. My copy of the novel had an additional "sketch" of MacGrath's career and his way of working. It appears that Harold was in the habit of completing his first chapter, then composing his ending, and filling in the rest of the book to connect to the two. It shows. In his haste to create a fast moving action piece, MacGrath often simply forgets to make sense in this mystery. As I say, he has done better--I'm thinking of The Yellow Typhoon.

By the way, at the end of the novel, the reader will discover that, yes, the butler did it. But just what he did precisely, I'll leave to readers to find out for themselves. show less