J. S. Fletcher (1863–1935)

This short novel is an uncomplicated and swashbuckling romp which I enjoyed between more serious and grimly-themed novels. Humphrey Salkeld is heir to an estate owned by his uncle Sir Thurstan. But another nephew, Jasper Stapleton, is egged on by his mother, Sir Thurstan’s sister, to resent Humphrey’s succession. Humphrey and Jasper also quarrel over the love of a beautiful girl, Rose Herrick. On a business trip to Scarborough, Jasper tricks his cousin and the latter ends up a prisoner show more aboard a Spanish ship and is forceably taken to Mexico. He faces imprisonment, torture by the Inquisition and being sentenced to be a galley slave on both sides of the Atlantic, working and struggling and fighting alongside the curiously named Cornish sailor Pharaoh Nanjulian. In the end they escape thanks to the timely intervention of Francis Drake himself, whose crew rescue all the galley slaves suffering under their Spanish oppressors, and Humphrey returns home to claim his bride. This novel is a product of its time in its simplistic description of heroic (Protestant) Englishmen fighting evil (Catholic) Spaniards, but is good fun. show less

Joseph Smith (J S) Fletcher was a prolific author of detective stories and historical fiction from the end of the 19th century and through the first third of the 20th century, but is hardly known today. This novel, published in 1920, sees a young Scotsman Andie Lauriston living in London and trying to make a breakthrough as an author of short stories. Down on his luck and awaiting payment from his first writing endeavours, he pawns a gold watch belonging to his father. Later on, he attempts show more to do likewise with two rings belonging to his mother, but discovers the pawnbroker dead and on leaving the shop to get help he is stopped by a policeman and suspected of murder. However, the policeman is soon convinced of his innocence and the plot thickens as a rare and valuable book of unknown provenance is discovered in the shop. Another death occurs in the neighbouring shop, and we have a complex plot involving South African diamond merchants, members of Parliament, Chinese and Japanese students and assorted policemen and legal folk, plus an old school friend of Lauriston's, who slightly implausibly puts his life on hold for a man he has had no communication with for many years; indeed Lauriston virtually disappears from the narrative after a while as others seem to take on his cause with slightly unrealistic ease. The eponymous jewel does not appear until over half way through the book and the villains all turn out to be the "Easterns" which is typical of a sub-genre of sensationalist literature from this period. Despite the slightly confusing final section, I enjoyed this whodunnit and would definitely read more by this author. show less

This novel was originally published in 1901, but the edition in the Eaton Collection is a 1927 republication that's obviously undergone some updating, as there's a ship named after the German president from 1919 to 1925... but on the other hand, the English characters are very friendly to the Germans given how recent the Great War is, making me think it pretty unlikely there was that much updating.

This book starts out kind of all right at best. Terrorists approach the British government, show more demanding funds to build a better world. Their threats and justifications feel very George Griffith, actually: "We are lovers of peace, and of brotherhood, and of the human family, and our earnest desire is for the welfare and prosperity of all men. But we know, being acquainted with this world’s history, that it is in the blood and tears of the few that the happiness of the many must find its foundation. Many will suffer that many more may enjoy." This is contrasted with the opinions of an old socialist revolutionary, though, who says violence is not the answer: "It is by enlightenment, not by force, that society must be reshaped. We build, and unbuild, and build again, and each building excels the other." Unlike with Griffith, it's clear where Fletcher wants you to side.

The government doesn't accede to the threats, of course, and a chemical bomb causes a significant chuck of London centered on Trafalgar Square to simply disappear. People panic, and in the end the government surrenders. The book turns all weird at this point: the protagonists are kidnapped by De Reineville, a mysterious French scientist who is actually a servant (or member) of an ancient telepathic gestalt! But the gestalt is undone surprisingly easily when a German ship accidentally collides with De Reineville’s yacht, then the Germans bombard the mysterious island, and basically just win right then.

Ostensibly the protagonist is Henry Graham, a foppish rising politician, but the novel suddenly becomes awesome exactly three-quarters of the way through, when the best friend of Graham's love interest takes over the novel. Like, literally: not only does she avoid taking De Reineville's poison when no one else does and not only does she start telling German naval captains what to do, but the novel goes from being in the third person omniscient to the first person from her perspective. Her opinion on Graham sums up the tone of the shift: “he [Graham] is not exactly the sort of person one would turn to for guidance if one were suddenly placed in a deep intellectual hole.” She's like one of those bossy women from a P. G. Wodehouse novel that Wooster is in danger of marrying, and it's so much fun. I don't know why Fletcher did this-- perhaps he was getting as bored as I was-- but it's amazing that he did. If the whole novel had been written this way, I'm convinced it would be a classic.

Of course, London is rebuilt, and unlike in some of these kind of novels, apparently exactly the same as it was before; those who want violent change are very much in the wrong here. The novel ends with some ridiculous praise of the resoluteness of the British people and the British Empire:

"For here, where London the Marvelous was for a brief moment crushed and staggered, in the heart of the world—here, where the four lions crouch at the feet of the hero of the sea—within the circle of a released carrier-pigeon’s first flight, all the strength and power of the Empire is comprised. From within that circle, as by invisible wires, go the bonds of Empire—ever widening, ever being strengthened. This is life—to hear the world’s wild heart beating close to your ear, to feel its fierce, keen, but always purposeful pulsation throbbing beneath your touch. Are these streets, stretching away from you as the spokes of a wheel stretch away from the hub, commonplace of aspect and dingy of color? But they are the haunts of the moles who go on scraping persistently and patiently until they have fashioned a kingdom and thrown out high towers above it. This is the very prospective of Empire and Government—when you gaze along yonder street your glance goes past the historic buildings which flank it to things and scenes far beyond, to wide stretches of continent, to lonely islands, to little scraps of land where the national flag floats undaunted. Heart of the world!—there is not a stone about it, new or old, that does not cry out its pæan of praise to the life that throbs and palpitates about it." show less

Fletcher is probably the best writer of old school detective fiction that I've ever read. The feel of this book was very modern. He kept the action moving and kept the reader guessing. I really enjoyed it. The story follows a young law clerk who stumbles into a web of murder, deception and greed.