Book #6: The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is quite an old book, published 1903, and was a completely blind read for me.
The main narrator, Carruthers, is taken on a boating trip by his friend Davies. At first, it seems unremarkable, until Davies starts talking of the suspicious behaviour of a character called Dollman. It seems that Davies is suspicious of Dollman, believing him to be a traitor, spying against his own country. So, he enlists Carruthers to start investigating his target - as he puts it "spy on a spy". The whole idea of people willing to betray their own country may well have been a significant issue back when the book was published, but I'd have to read more about the time when this was written, to understand the context.
I wasn't fully convinced by this book. First off, the narrative style is very dense; it put me in mind of some of Edgar Allen Poe's adventure stories ("The Golden Scarab", for example). Several of the chapters seemed to be filled with lengthy, long-winded paragraphs.
One of the other issues I had was quite early on, when Davies started telling Carruthers a story of his own; it was quite difficult to realise that the book had switched from one first-person narrative to a completely different one.
This book was slow-moving, although it got more exciting in the second half, and it did at least end with an unexpected plot twist, but because of the writing style I probably wouldn't be looking up anything else by Erskine Childers any time soon.
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