The Doctor of Pimlico

Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime

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About this book

An artillery inspection on the Firth of Tay gives Walter Fetherston a chance to see Enid Orlebar again. A popular mystery novelist, Fetherston keeps his private life behind a carefully managed public identity and uses the name Maltwood abroad. His interest in Enid, General Sir Hugh Elcombe's stepdaughter, dates from a meeting while she was nursing in Biarritz. The opening places his personal hopes alongside military conversation and speculation about his affairs.

William Le Queux builds this novel around secrecy and suspicion, with physicians and London's Pimlico district among its subjects. A later scene shows Paul Le Pontois taken into custody by agents from Paris, bewildered by their orders and confident of his innocence. He leaves a brief message for his wife before being driven toward Verdun. Readers of older mystery fiction can follow the tension between outward respectability, private attachments and official power.

About the author

William Le Queux

William Le Queux (1864-1927) was an Anglo-French writer and self-styled secret agent, one of the earliest and most prolific authors of spy and invasion fiction.