THE FINAL COUNT

Robin Gaunt's new invention was terrifyingly, unimaginably powerful: a weapon of chemical warfare which caused "universal, instantaneous death". When Gaunt disappeared from his rooms, leaving no trace but a faint bitter smell, the police suspected that he had sold out to the other side.

But Bulldog Drummond believes otherwise. Convinced of Gaunt's innocence, he can think of only one man ruthless enough to use the invention to hold the world to ransom, and he is determined to track him down before it is too lake. Then he receives an invitation to a lavish dinner-dance aboard an airship that is to mark the beginning of his final battle for triump...

'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 thepen 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.