Best 1913 Adventures (2)

By: Joshua Glenn
February 19, 2018

One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1913 adventure novels. Happy 105th anniversary!

*

Original 1913 edition unavailable; this is the cover of a 1952 edition

Victor Bridges’ crime adventure The Man from Nowhere.

Jack Burton, recently returned to England after some years spent prospecting for gold in South America, bumps into a wealthy man with a sinister reputation: Stuart Northcote. The two men are nearly identical-looking, which prompts Northcote, whose life is in danger, to hire Burton to assume his own place in London society for three weeks. A beautiful South American woman, Mercia Solano, attempts to kill Burton, believing him to be Northcote; Burton immediately falls in love with her. Northcote’s butler, Milford, is poisoned; and Northcote’s cousin, Maurice, helps replace Milford with an assassin! Burton rounds up a tough friend, from his prospecting days, to accompany him to Suffolk, where Maurice, Mercia, and a gang of killers are laying in wait. Who is Northcote, why does everyone want to kill him — and what will become of Burton when it’s all over?

Fun facts: Bridges was a prolific author of crime fiction. In 2016, HILOBROW serialized Bridges’ 1915 hunted-man adventure, A Rogue by Compulsion: An Affair of the Secret Service.

***

JOSH GLENN’S *BEST ADVENTURES* LISTS: BEST 250 ADVENTURES OF THE 20TH CENTURY | 100 BEST OUGHTS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST RADIUM AGE (PROTO-)SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TEENS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TWENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST THIRTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST GOLDEN AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FORTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FIFTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SIXTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST NEW WAVE SCI FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SEVENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST EIGHTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST DIAMOND AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST NINETIES ADVENTURES (in progress) | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | NOTES ON 21st-CENTURY ADVENTURES.

Categories

Adventure, Lit Lists