The Great Secret (1908)

THE GREAT SECRET (1908)

One of the interests in reading what is now relatively unknown fiction is to see to what extent themes in Oppenheim's books seem to be present in later and more lastingly successful works.
In the case of The Great Secret it is Buchan's The Thirty Nine Steps that comes to mind.

A man with a great secret vis-a-vis German war aims is in danger of his life from the Hun's secret service and is given sanctuary in our county cricket playing hero's room. Shades of Hannay and Scudder.
Concerns about immigration are obvious. Written only two years before the Sidney Street siege in which bank-robbing foreign anarchists were brought to heel by Winston Churchill, London is seen as a nest of plotting German waiters and other covert types.
Although it is an entertaining story-and, after all, war did come-it is too cartoon like to take seriously.
6/10