Thank you for all your kind comments on this latest audio adventure. That said, George, a First Hour Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club from Massachusetts, is beginning to wonder if they're not all connected up like some Marvel-Disney multiverse:
Mark,
What strikes me of so many of the Tales for Our Time is how well they well seem to dovetail into one another.The Secret Agent takes place, roughly, at the same time Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson started operating. The Riddle of the Sands is adding to an unease in Great Britain. In His Last Bow Sherlock takes on the German spy and diplomatic mastermind and sees both clearly the civilizational disaster ahead and the impossibility of stopping it.
Meanwhile Richard Hannay is himself taking on a more ruthless German Spy ring in The Thirty-Nine Steps. Richard Hannay figures in another German scheme in Greenmantle and yet another ruthless German Spy ring (from The Thirty-Nine Steps no less) in Mr. Standfast. (Not yet a Tale for Our Time.) Even as the war rages on, the flotsam and jetsam of the war wash Hercule Poirot onto the English shore where he meets Captain Hastings, a casualty of the war.
The war ends, in Bulldog Drummond, with victorious Allied armies marching into Germany. Even as this takes place a super criminal is plotting with German and German sympathizing industrialists to take down Great Britain.
All of the action really starts in 1920. Tommy and Tuppence meet The Secret Adversary who hopes to control the same forces that Carl Peterson is organizing. Richard Hannay is back rescuing The Three Hostages and dealing with yet another master criminal to be taken down. Biggles (as yet not a Tale for our Time) in The Black Peril deals with yet another German plot against Britain. Hercule Poirot helps prevent the German theft of The Submarine Plans in 1923.
The end of the Great War brought forth a different type of detective, no longer the reserved Sherlock Holmes but finding the man of action Bulldog Drummond in his place, as well as many others. I have to wonder if there was something else in the air in Great Britain or was it the societal upheavals caused by the end of the Great War that sparked such a vibrant outpouring of detective fiction. And why does 1920 seem to figure so prominently in the writing?
Just for the record, George, we've also covered the French Revolution and "the year without a summer" and all kinds of other things. So we're not quite as uniquely obsessed as you suggest. But, in an age when Hitler is the only historical figure anyone's ever heard of, I have always thought that the First War is the conflict that made the world we live in: its long shadow, not least the loss of civilisational self-confidence it inculcated, hangs over us still. I said as much in a column two or three days after 9/11, and I continue to believe it. Of course, the situation has deteriorated year on year: The men who set up the United Nations, for example, as the World War Two victory parade preserved in aspic would be astonished to find that the largest single (and single-minded) voting bloc is the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. We are in the end stage of a long process that began in the rubble of the Great War.
And, on that cheery note, welcome to tonight's episode of our latest Tale for Our Time - my audio serialisation of Sapper's Bulldog Drummond, the caper that introduced a character who would remain a household name for the next half-century. In this latest installment, Captain Drummond and a representative of "the police force of the United States of America" find their minds spinning along the same lines as George above:
"There he is—still drinking high-balls. You say he was with a crowd of revolutionaries last night. What do you mean exactly?"
"Bolshevists, Anarchists, members of the Do-no-work-and-have-all-the-money Brigade," answered Hugh...
"Revolutionaries, Bolshevists, paid agitators last night: international financiers this evening. Why, the broad outline of the plan is as plain as the nose on your face; and it's just the sort of game that man would love...," said the American. "Doesn't it strike you that there are quite a number of people in this world who would benefit if England became a sort of second Russia? That such a thing would be worth money—big money?"
If you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club you can hear Part Eighteen of our serialisation of Bulldog Drummond simply by clicking here and logging-in. All previous episodes can be found here.
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And do join me tomorrow for the nineteenth episode of Bulldog Drummond.