Hugh Thomson, a surgeon-major, and Geraldine Conyers are engaged. He is in command of military counter-intelligence while being ostensibly in charge of military hospitals on the French front. He is a German master spy who appears to be able to cross borders and switch between Germany and England. After being twice captured and again escaping the Germans, Captain Granet is a wounded war hero who was recently given the DSO. He meets Geraldine Conyers and eventually falls in love with her. The development and usage of secret military weaponry designed to attack German submarines drives the plot forward. Aircraft remain novelties, and a nocturnal Zeppelin raid takes place on a top-secret armaments laboratory. There are glimpses of the brutality of Ypres and other wars, and there is still a remarkable degree of fluidity between the French battlefields and London society.
E. Phillips Oppenheim was born on October 22, 1866, in Tohhenham, London, England, to Henrietta Susannah Temperley Budd and Edward John Oppenheim, a leather retailer. After leaving school at age 17, he helped his father in his leather business and used to write in his extra time. His first novel, Expiration (1886), and subsequent thrillers piqued the interest of a wealthy New York businessman who eventually bought out the leather business and made Oppenheim a high-paid director.He is more focused on dedicating most of his time to writing. The novels, volumes of short stories, and plays that followed, numbering more than 150, were about humans with modern heroes, fearless spies, and stylish noblemen. The Long Arm of Mannister (1910), The Moving Finger (1911), and The Great Impersonation (1920) are three of his most famous essays.
