Black Gang - Softcover

"Sapper"

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0460022458 ISBN 13: 9780460022453

Publisher: Orion Publishing Co, 1988

Synopsis

Although the First World War is over, it seems that the hostilities are not, and when Captain Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond discovers that a stint of bribery and blackmail is undermining England’s democratic tradition, he forms the Black Gang, bent on tracking down the perpetrators of such plots. They set a trap to lure the criminal mastermind behind these subversive attacks to England, and all is going according to plan until Bulldog Drummond accepts an invitation to tea at the Ritz with a charming American clergyman and his dowdy daughter

About this title

About the Author:

Sapper is the pen name of Herman Cyril McNeile, born in 1888 at the Naval Prison in Bodmin, Cornwall, where his father was Governor. He served in the Royal Engineers (popularly known as 'sappers') from 1907-19, being awarded the Military Cross during World War 1.

He started writing in France, adopting a pen name because serving officers were not allowed to write under their own names. When his first stories, about life in the trenches, were published in 1915, they were an enormous success. But it was his first thriller, Bulldog Drummond (1920) that launched him as one of the most popular novelists of his generation. It had several amazingly successful sequels, including The Black Gang, The Third Round and The Final Count. Another great success was Jim Maitland (1923), featuring a footloose English sahib in foreign lands.

Sapper published nearly thirty books in total, and a vast public mourned his death when he died in 1937, at the early age of forty-eight. So popular was his 'Bulldog Drummond' series that his friend, the late Gerard Fairlie, wrote several Bulldog Drummond stories after his death under the same pen name, which had by then become synonymous with fast-paced, intelligent thrillers and complex, vibrant characters.

Review:

Naxos AudioBooks has come out with an unabridged audiobook of the second Bulldog Drummond novel, The Black Gang. Published in 1922, it pits Drummond and his clubby chums against Carl Peterson, a man reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes' nemesis, Moriarty. Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, admitted Peterson, in turn, served as the model for the evil Blofeld with whom James Bond battled on behalf of Her Majesty's Secret Service. Admittedly, Fleming and Conan Doyle, Holmes' creator, wrote much more nuanced books than Sapper, but the lack of refinement does not detract in the least bit from the thriller aspects of The Black Gang...probably the best of the four books dealing with this gang. Actor Roy McMillan is highly effective as the reader of this tale in audiobook format. His vocal impersonations of the various characters, good and evil there are no shades in between these two are excellent. For those who recall Bulldog Drummond from radio programs, this version of The Black Gang will lead them on a sentimental, albeit violence-charged journey into the past. --Alidė Kohlhaas, Lancette Arts Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0460022458
• ISBN 13: 9780460022453
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1