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.
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.
Alexander Wilson was a writer, spy and secret service officer. He served in the First World War before moving to India to teach as a Professor of English Literature, and began writing spy novels whilst there. During WW2, Wallace worked as an intelligence agent. He enjoyed great success and notoriety for his writing in the 1940s, with reviews in the Telegraph, Observer, Scotsman and the Times Literary Supplement. He died in 1963.
