William Le Queux (1864–1927)

The House of Whispers is set in Scotland, which gives the heroine, Gabrielle, who is "sweet, almost child-like in her simple tastes and delightful charm", far too many opportunities to go romping through the heather in her fetching tam o'shanter, trusty sheep-dog by her side. The Scottish setting also allows Le Queux to wander off into pages of Scottish history, which is only marginally relevant to the plot. There are many pages of poetry, some of it in Italian, some of it in French, but show more most of it in this type of Scottish English: Oh Castell Gloom! on thy fair wa's Nae banners now are streamin'; the howlit flits amang thy ha's, And the wild birds there are screamin'.

The sickening Gabrielle is devoted to her elderly (he's 53!) grey-faced, blind father, who was a brilliant politician until he suddenly went blind one evening. Unfortunately, because she is a woman, no amount of devotion can make Gabrielle trustworthy, so the dreary old man chooses to believe the tales told him by a disreputable childhood friend of his wife's. This man, party to Gabrielle's terrible secret, "held her irrestistibly within his toils. His clean-shaven face was a distinctly evil one. His eyes were set too close together, and in his physiognomy was something unscrupulous and relentless. He was not the man for a woman to trust."

There is a great deal of waffle about the terrible secret. Gabrielle would rather die than disclose it, but no secret can survive that sort of build-up, so in the end it's a bit of a disappointment.

Characters pop in and out as needed and at least one undergoes a complete personality change. The plot is ludicrous.

This is a lesson in how not to write a crime novel. show less

William le Queux got his start in the 1890s and 1900s writing anti-German invasion fiction. The Terror of the Air reads like an attempt to port the conventions of the George Griffith narrative over into the post-Great War setting, though here the secret cabal of aerial pirates are the bad guys, a group of Germans bitter about losing the war. Their plan is a bit incoherent, though: first they raid air-ships, then they make terrorist threats and disintegrate Charing Cross (a lot like in The show more Three Days' Terror) then they release a plague, then they attack London's food supply, then they release poison gas. The pirates at one point seem to be like those of many 1890s revolutionary sf stories, with ideological motivations, given their threat:

WAR!
THE COUNCIL OF TEN
declare war against the social order.
CAPITALISM is abolished!
Everyone must live in absolute equality.
The social revolution is proclaimed anew.
In three nights London, the centre of Capital-
ism, will be punished for its crimes. Heed
this warning!
AND ACT!

But this seems to just be a ruse, as the ideology is never followed up on.

The ostensible protagonist is Major Alan Maclean, an officer in the British Imperial Air Force, but le Queux gives all the good ideas to his girlfriend Violet Eustace, and she's a better flier to boot. She saves his life more than once, yet the narrative always treats her as a sidekick. It's weird. Also she's about the only interesting thing in this tedious book. It ends with some points unresolved; I don't know if it was to set up a sequel or just sloppy writing. show less

This book came out in 1916, and takes place around then, as well, detailing the development of a weapon that will ignite the gas-bags in Zeppelins-- to my disappointment, the "Zeppelin Destroyer" means a destroyer of Zeppelins, not a Zeppelin that destroys. The protagonists, just like le Queux's later Terror of the Air, are a British aeronaut and his plucky flying fiancée.

It's not as science fictional as many of its contemporary proto-sf stories, nor even as science fictional as le Queux's show more other works: it's a pretty conventional spy/war story, with some military policy critique in the style of The Battle of Dorking or The Riddle of the Sands, with characters explaining to each other that they have nothing personally against the defence departments, and they're sure they're trying their hardest, but couldn't they institute better airraid warnings? There's also some pretty good scenes of mass destruction when the Zeppelins are attacked.

I was amused that the narrator admires his fiancée for not acquiring any hardness of feature despite her outdoor exploits, and doesn't seem to recognize the dissonance a couple hundred pages later when he complains that too many women wear makeup these days. show less

Here is William Le Queux in top form with this very readable thriller.
His hero is Walter Fetherston,an author of 'breathless thrillers' and a world traveller of renown. he also works undercover for the police and indeed the government. Remind you of somebody ? Le Queux himself perhaps. It is just after the First World War and Germany is trying everything it can to recover its power in the world. France has built a series of secret fortifications on the borders,which however seem to be fairly show more public knowledge. Spies abound and so do criminal types of all kinds.Blackmail and murder seem commonplace too. The only black mark I can give this excellent thriller is that the author will insist on bringing in a gawky love interest which I am sure will not go down well with the reader of today. Skip it and you will enjoy this much the better. show less