Synopses & Reviews
An excellent addition to Penguin's crime classics: the tantalizing tale of Colonel Clay, literature's first gentleman rogue.
Wealthy, confident and handsome, Sir Charles Van Drift spends his time jetting to exotic locales with his wife and in-laws. But on one fateful trip to the Riviera, Van Drift meets his match in Colonel Clay. Posing alternately as a seer, a curate, and a German professor, the master of disguise swindles Van Drift through three continents and poses a serious risk to his South African diamond fortune. Colonel Clay, the notorious con artist and thief, has triumphed. But who is this master of disguise, really?
First serialized in The Strand in 1896, the adventures that comprise An African Millionaire are widely regarded as the first to feature a criminal protagonist and will be greeted enthusiastically by fans and scholars of classic crime fiction.
Review
"Glorious...I never enjoyed a novel more than
Captain Blood." —
Norman Mailer
"One of the great unrecognized novels of the twentieth century, and as close as any modern writer has come to a prose epic." —George MacDonald Fraser
Review
[
Fantomas is] like going on a roller coaster: you know what to expect but you scream, with fear and pleasure, anyway. . . . They dont writeem like that anymore. (Michael Dirda)
Fantomas is still scary (The Washington Post Book World)
Synopsis
Just before sailing off to war in the Sudan, British guardsman Harry Feversham quits his regiment. He immediately receives four white feathers-symbols of cowardice-one each from his three best friends and his fiancée. To disprove this grave dishonor, Harry dons an Arabian disguise and leaves for the Sudan, where he anonymously comes to the aid of his three friends, saving each of their lives. Having proved his bravery, Harry returns to England, hoping to regain the love and respect of his fiancée. This suspenseful tale movingly depicts a distinctive code of honor that was deeply valued and strongly promoted by the British during the height of their imperial power.
Synopsis
Peter Blood is a physician and an English gentleman who becomes a pirate out of a rankling sense of injustice. Barely escaping the gallows after his arrest for treating wounded rebels who were fighting the oppressive King James, Blood flees England and becomes enslaved on a Barbados plantation of buccaneers. When he escapes, no ship sailing the Spanish Main is safe from Blood and his companions. Abounding with adventure, color, romance, and strong social commentary on the evils of slavery and the dangers of intolerance, this classic adventure is a story about how oppression drives men to desperate actions, how fate plays a hand in everyone's life, and how love is ultimately the greatest power of all.
Edited with an introduction by Gary Hoppenstand.
Synopsis
One of literature’s first, greatest, and most dastardly gentleman rogues finally joins the Penguin Classics crime list First published in 1900, A
Prince of Swindlers introduces Simon Carne, a gentleman thief predating both E. W. Hornung’s A. J. Raffles and Maurice Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin. The British Viceroy first meets Carne while traveling in India. Charmed, he invites the reclusive hunchbacked scholar to London, little suspecting that his guest is actually an adventurer and a master of disguise. Carne—aided by his loyal butler, Belton—embarks on a crime spree, stealing from London’s richest citizens and then making fools of them by posing as a detective investigating the thefts. Now back in print after over a century, Guy Boothby’s tale promises to delight a new generation of crime fans.
Synopsis
One episode simply melts away as the next takes over” (
The New York Times) in this deliciously sinister turn-of-the-century tale of a French evil genius run rampant. Three appalling crimes leave all of Paris aghast: the Marquise de Langruen is hacked to death, the Princess Sonia is robbed, and Lord Beltham is found dead, stuffed into a trunk. Inspector Juve knows that all the clues point to one suspect: the master of disguise, Fantômas. Juve cleverly pursues him in speeding trains, down dark alleys, through glittering Parisian salons, obsessed with bringing the demon mastermind to justice. As thrilling to read now as it was when first published in 1915,
Fantômas is not a puzzle but an intoxicant” (
The Village Voice).
About the Author
Rafael Sabatini was born in Italy, in 1875, to two opera singers, and often joined his parents on their professional tours of Europe. In 1918, he became a British subject and worked for the British Intelligence during World War I. He published his first novel,
The Lovers of Yvonne, at the age of 27, and continued to produce numerous historical novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, and some biographies.
Scaramouche was first published in 1921, followed by
Captain Blood in 1922. Sabatini died in 1950, while vacationing at a Swiss ski resort.
Gary Hoppenstand is a professor in the Department of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University. He has researched and published widely in the areas of popular culture and popular fiction studies, and he edited the Penguin Classics editions of Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda/Rupert of Hentzau and A.E.W. Mason's The Four Feathers. He is the past president of the Popular Culture Association, and the current editor of The Journal of Popular Culture.
Table of Contents
Introduction vii
Suggestions for Further Reading xxvii
I. The Messenger 1
II. Kirke's Dragons 10
III. The Lord Chief Justice 19
IV. Human Merchandise 33
V. Arabella Bishop 40
VI. Plans of Escape 53
VII. Pirates 69
VIII. Spaniards 80
IX. The Rebels-Convict 87
X. Don Diego 100
XI. Filial Piety 106
XII. Don Pedro Sangre 118
XIII. Tortuga 126
XIV. Levasseur's Heroics 135
XV. The Ransom 145
XVI. The Trap 157
XVII. The Dupes 169
XVIII. The Milagrosa 184
XIX. The Meeting 197
XX. Thief and Pirate 208
XXI. The Service of King James 220
XXII. Hostilities 234
XXIII. Hostages 243
XXIV. War 256
XXV. The Service of King Louis 269
XXVI. M. de Rivarol 279
XXVII. Cartagena 292
XXVIII. The Honor of M. de Rivarol 302
XXIX. The Service of King William 310
XXX. The Last Flight of the Arabella 316
XXXI. His Excellency the Governor 323