This is one of the books that helped define the genre of the espionage/spy thriller. Written more than a century ago (it first appeared in 1903), The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers, remains, in the words of one great master of the genre, John LeCarré, "one of the great foundation stones of the contemporary novel of espionage and adventure with political teeth." As such, I think it's worth calling your attention to a book which is still very much in print 116 years after its first appearance. Here's the text of my audio review from the Classic Mysteries podcast several years ago, slightly edited (mostly to update information about availability):
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It sounded like a pleasant vacation, to the young man from the British foreign office. Why not join an acquaintance for a cruise aboard his yacht in the Baltic? There might even be some good duck shooting. Great idea! Only it didn’t quite work out that way. And, in fact, it’s a good thing it didn’t – otherwise there might have been a war that could have led to the conquest of England. It happens in The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers.
We are going way back this week – back to what was really the first real political spy thriller. It was in 1903 that Erskine Childers wrote The Riddle of the Sands: a Record of Secret Service. The book is recognized today as one of the primary ancestors of the great spy novels – a tradition that includes such authors as Ian Fleming, John le Carré and Len Deighton. Look at any of today’s best-seller lists, and you are sure to find any number of spy thrillers – and most of them follow the formula first laid out in The Riddle of the Sands – a struggle between a good individual or small group and a much larger force for evil.
In the Europe of 1903, that boiled down to a couple of young Englishmen who uncover and foil a plot that could have put Germany in an unassailable position to dominate all of Europe, including England.
The story begins with a rather foppish young functionary in the British foreign office, a man named Carruthers, looking for some way to spend his vacation time. His usual round of house-parties with rather vapid friends is unavailable. So he accepts a chance invitation from an old school acquaintance, Davies, who invites him to join him in cruising the Baltic Sea in a small yacht.
Carruthers goes to meet Davies – and is horrified to discover that the "small yacht" is really a rather rough sailing boat named the Dulcibella. No luxury cruises here; Carruthers must get his hands – and the rest of him – dirty in helping to sail the boat. Fortunately, Davies is an accomplished sailor, and Carruthers quickly learns the ropes – quite literally, in this case.
But it doesn’t take long before the two young Englishmen find there is something very peculiar going on among the islands and the treacherous shifting sands of the North Sea, part of the coast of Holland and Germany. Without knowing exactly what or why, it appears that they have stumbled on some kind of plot – something big enough so that there has already been a serious attempt to kill Davies.
The two begin to explore the coastal waters, under the pretext of a pleasure cruise and duck hunting expedition. And their situation becomes more precarious as the novel progresses. Ultimately, they will uncover a daring and dangerous plot – and how they discover it and what they do about it will be at the heart of the book.
One of the innovations in this novel, something which has become a convention in the genre, is that the whole thing is based on some degree of fact. In the case of The Riddle of the Sands, that reality is grounded in the geography of the North Sea’s coastline and the large and dangerous sandbanks – a place where sailing at the wrong time and the wrong tide can lead to the grounding or even the breakup of a ship. The story was also grounded on the relationship between England and Germany during the first decade of the twentieth century.
It is entertaining to watch the development of Carruthers during the course of the novel, as he learns some basic seamanship from Davies and develops from a superficial and rather disagreeable young man into a rugged sailor and patriot. Some of the exploits in the book are fairly awe-inspiring. One of the central incidents, for example, finds Carruthers and Davies rowing a small dinghy – a rowboat, really – for a distance of 14 nautical miles, in a dense fog, over the treacherous waters and dangerous sands, calculating their way, fighting the tides and the bad weather, hoping to reach their destination in time to spy on a secret meeting of their enemies. It is exhausting just to read about it – and it is not the only heroic effort in the book.
There is one way in which The Riddle of the Sands does show its age: it is certainly more slowly paced than today’s thrillers. Readers who expect excitement on every page may be disappointed, although there is plenty going on. Readers will also have to use the maps and charts provided in the book in order to understand the geography and the movements of the different characters.
But the book remains an exciting, interesting and witty novel of espionage, not to mention one of the best books ever written about this kind of seafaring. There are now several new editions of The Riddle of the Sands, readily available, in paper, ebook and audio versions; the edition on my own bookshelves is from Penguin Classics and appears to be available as an e-book - it has a new introduction by the author’s great-grandson, Erskine C. Childers, who provides considerable insight into the historical, political and geographical background of the novel – and biographical information about his great-grandfather. The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is more than just an interesting oddity of literary history – it is still, more than a century later, a very entertaining read.
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You can listen to the original audio version of the review by clicking here.
Next: Frequent Hearses, also known as Sudden Vengeance, by Edmund Crispin.
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