A review by peterp3
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers

3.5

This novel begins and ends well, but it’s rather plodding and repetitive in the middle. It’s historically interesting though as ‘the first modern spy thriller’, and it’s obviously written partly to challenge complacency at the time (1903) about the growing threat of German ambitions to challenge the British Empire. Childers may have been wrong in envisioning a naval challenge rather than a land war, but written more than 10 years before the war, the book is remarkably prescient.