Best 1913 Adventures (2)
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February 19, 2018
One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1913 adventure novels. Happy 105th anniversary!
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.