While on a sailing trip in the Baltic Sea, two young adventurers-turned-spies uncover a secret German plot to invade England. Widely recognized as the first modern spy thriller, this lone masterpiece by World War I Royal Navy officer Erskine Childers was written in 1903 as a wake-up call to the British government to attend to its North Sea defenses. It accomplished that task and has been considered a classic of espionage literature ever since. Praised for its nautical action and richly authentic background as much as for its suspenseful spycraft, The Riddle of the Sands is the brilliant forerunner to the realism of Graham Greene and John le Carré.
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"well I ploughed through the last hundred pages. gripping stuff. the narrator takes a bit of getting used to, as he's a stuffy, pretentious, obnoxious bastard for the first few chapters. after a while on the boat though, he mellows out. We don't see much of Davies' character until a good halfway through, and it's quite obvious that the main focus of the first half of the novel is the land/sea-scape, knowledge of which is pretty much vital to understanding the plot, and adds to the suspense built during the second half."
— Dermo (4 out of 5 stars)
“This is a book of great renown…Its beautifully sustained atmosphere…adds poetry, and…real mystery.”
— Ian Fleming“Eric Ambler fans will find this a fascinating antecedent.”
— Publishers Weekly“Simon Vance lends a mature sound and considerable technique to his narration, making Childers’ seafaring not only apparent, but contagious.”
— AudioFile“The Riddle of the Sands has delighted generations of sailing aficionados and thriller readers with its nautical and political verisimilitude.”
— Booklist" Hmm... Swallows and Amazons meets James Bond. I liked it, but it was over long on sailing description and short on action. Interesting, atmospheric and unique never-the-less. "
— Andy, 2/20/2014" A bit long winded and nautical, but a fairy interesting read "
— Jeff, 2/18/2014" I found this a really hard book to read. "
— Laura, 2/15/2014" definitely a book for sailing enthusiasts. first time i read this i was utterly confused. It made a lot more sense this time around "
— Cyanide, 2/14/2014" First time I read this book it was magical. The author (this was his only book) poured everything he knew about sailing and sands and tides into this espionage story. In fact I need to go read it again... "
— Stephen, 2/14/2014" More of a yachting novel than a spy novel, it is never less than interesting, but fails to carry quite the menace that would lift it into a real page-turner. Carruthers of the Foreign Office is summoned by a slight friend to join him yachting amongst the shallows off the north German coast. They find the Germans preparing facilities for a potential sea invasion of England. Childers is seen as remarkably prescient for imagining it ten years before the First World War, I see it more simply as being redolent of the times of empire-building and expansionism when countries had not reconciled themselves to their allotted share of territories. War was a commonplace hazard of a permanent soldiery. Germany wishing to invade us was not seen as quite the heinous act of aggression that we would view it in the light of later events. A good read, but more likely to inspire me to become Ben Ainslie than James Bond. "
— Ian, 2/13/2014" Starts out very strong--a tale of sailing and espionage on the North Sea prior to World War I, but gets extremely repetitive and the plot fails to spark interest about half way through the book. "
— Jldalquist, 2/10/2014" Written in 1903, 2nd spy novel (after Kim). Boats, North Sea, looming WWI tensions (at one point author says that war won't come for at least another 10 years), but driven by details of sailing and geography of Frisian coast and potential plots, not as much as by camaraderie between characters as I would like. "
— Jensie, 2/9/2014" I am AMAZED that this shows up in a list of the 100 best mystery novels of all time. The "plot" consists of the tale of two men sailing up and around the German coast pre-WWI, where there are innumerable sandy islands, sandy islets, and sandbars. Hence the name. But I felt I had experienced their sailing adventures in real time, all the while not understanding the plethora of sailing jargon used. Oh, well, I thought, some action has to come soon. There is a little action, and even a little love interest. So I hung on to the end, hoping for some resolution. There is none! We don't find out the secret of the mysterious Herr Dollmann, who is really a Mr. X from England, nor do we learn anything about the outcome of the love interest! It's all hushed up, we're told, to protect the identity of the traitor and his daughter. Waste. of. time. "
— Kathy, 2/5/2014" i found this quite hard to read as it had a lot of sailing terms i wasn't familiar with, but it has a good storyline "
— Becky, 2/3/2014" I struggled with this one the first time I read it, but something drew me back to it and I read it a second time and loved it. It's slow going early on, but there's something timeless about it that really holds up, especially given that it's one of, if not the, first modern spy novels ever written. Just a couple of regular guys who find themselves in the right place to make a difference. And how did Childers foresee the threat Germany would become to England? "
— James, 2/1/2014Erskine Childers (1870–1922) was an Irish nationalist and novelist. He was the editor of the Cambridge Review and the author of the influential novel Riddle of the Sands, which the Observer listed as one of the “100 Greatest Novels of All Time.” It is considered by many to be the first spy novel.
Simon Vance (a.k.a. Robert Whitfield) is an award-winning actor and narrator. He has earned more than fifty Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration thirteen times. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009. He has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks over almost thirty years, beginning when he was a radio newsreader for the BBC in London. He is also an actor who has appeared on both stage and television.