Chronicles of the Secret Service

LoveReading Says

A Maxim Jakubowski selected title.

Already the ninth (and final) volume in a series of fascinating vintage reissues from the 1930s, featuring the exploits of Sir Leonard Wallace and his hardy British Secret Service team fighting enemies of the state and foreign spies both on our shores and overseas. Nostalgic, full of echoes of a forgotten age and the essence of old-fashioned English pulp at its best, Wilson's series has been unduly neglected and prefigures James Bond in its constant derring-do and sense of Englishness.

Notwithstanding its historical importance (Wilson, actually the grandfather of the striking 'Luther' actress Ruth Wilson, was himself a spy, serving in WW1 and thereafter teaching in India and active in intelligence during WW2), these tales are turn page reads and supremely entertaining, the missing link between Sherlock Holmes and James Bond and rip-roaring fun.

A major rediscovery of eight novels and, in the present volume, three novellas bound to excite and delight.

Reviewed by Maxim Jakubowski
Maxim Jakubowski is a London-based novelist and editor.
More reviews by Maxim Jakubowski

About Chronicles of the Secret Service

Frustrated with the sheer ennui of London life and looking for fresh excitement, Anthony Anstruther and his girlfriend leave a nightclub to find a drunken Russian tramp playing noughts and crosses in chalk on Anthony's car. This seemingly innocent enterprise spurs on a chain of events involving the British Secret Service and an assassination that would shake the Empire to its foundations. In this thrilling trio of adventures, Sir Leonard Wallace and his Secret Service agents will thwart criminal endeavours from Hong Kong to Afghanistan and they'll stop at nothing to save the day.

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