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The Riddle of the Sands
Fiction e-Book-of-the-Month, July 2000. A MYSTERIOUS LETTER from an old friend, an invitation to what starts out as a simple sailing trip...and a worldly Englishman sets off on an incredible adventure that takes him from the treacherous waters of the Baltic, to the sands of the Frisian Islands, to the scent of foreign ambition in the North Sea, and the uncovering of a military threat to Great Britain and the free world. Erskine Childers knew his subject matter well: yachtsman, journalist, civil servant, and - some would say - spy, thirteen years after the publication of his book, he was implicated in arms shipments to the Irish Republican Army during the uprising in 1916. Before Childers' book was published, most adventure novels took the form of police procedurals and detective tales, as in the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As the first modern spy novel, The Riddle of the Sands re-invented the genre, leading the way for the masters of the espionage tradition, John Le Carre, Len Deighton, Frederick Forsyth. But in the book can also be found the seeds of a more recently recognized subgenre, whose foremost practicioner is Tom Clancy. Deliciously precise details about the yacht "Dulcibella", vivid descriptions of the mechanics of sailing, and extraordinary feats of tidal navigation - all these make The Riddle of the Sands arguably the first modern techno-thriller.
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