The Great Impersonation (1920)

THE GREAT IMPERSONATION (1920)

Selling over a million copies and filmed three times this is Oppenheim's most successful book. Published in 1920 it is set just before the First World War. Two physically similar men who have been together at Eton meet in East Africa years later. Both are in exile, disgraced as a result of the deaths of men they have fought.

The Englishman Sir Everard Dominey is sent to his death in the bush by the German patriot and spy His Excellency the Major-General Baron Leopold Von Ragastein. 

Ragastein takes on Dominey's identity and returns to England and his estate in Norfolk.

The Kaiser and the German secret service have great plans for Ragastein/Dominey as an influential Englishman in the event of war and fund him lavishly. However Ragastein/Dominey has a wife who has become mad as a result of seeing her husband bloodied after attacking the morose rival for her affections. Her further descent into madness comes as a result of the Mrs Danver's-like figure of her housekeeper, the mother of the deceased, who manipulates her.

Moreover Ragastein meets the Hungarian wife of the man he killed in a duel, a beautiful princess who is determined that he will now marry her. 

All these characters, the naive peace-loving German ambassador and others are brought together at the Norfolk house which is haunted by the presumed ghost of the man Dominey killed. With war approaching and the likelihood that Ragastein/Dominey will be exposed tensions and subplots build...

Themes include: adventure, war, romance, patriotism, espionage, the nature of identity.

Conclusion: breathless on the edge-of-the-seat tension 7/10.