::AMAZON REVIEWS::

Spies, Sailboats and Sand
For lovers of spy/espionage thrillers this is a great read. Childers, despite his slow(70 page) start maintains a high level of informative tension to almost the end. Who are the villains and who are the heroes and who can be trusted? The purpose of the the author,as was John Buchan's 'Thirty-Nine Steps' which was made into a fine Hitchcock film, was to warn the pre-World War I British establishment of the dangerous intentions of Imperial Germany and to awaken Britain from its complacent slumber. The evolution of the central character from snobbish dandy to a sea-toughened spy is skillfully drawn. To get the most from your reading, bring along your own maps of the North Sea/Friesan Islands,Baltic Sea region.

Frustration leading to skimming
Childers' novel was a real disappointment. After starting to read the original Ian Fleming James Bond novels for Fleming's centennial, my interest in spy novels was piqued and I decided to make a survey of them. I was going to start with The 39 Steps until I came across The Riddle of the Sands. I wasn't expecting a Bond-style thriller, and I came with an open mind, but this was a tedious and underwhelming story with little general historical interest.

Originally published in 1903, the story is a first-person account of a pre-WWI British Foreign Office employee who gets caught up in the discovery of German invasion plans while on a sailing holiday. The book was written as a serious account of events for the expressed purpose of jarring the public into recognition of the German threat.

While the plot sounds like a decent one for a spy novel, and while the reader with an interest in historical fiction might expect to find period interest, most of the book is detailed accounts of sailing, complete with nautical terms and descriptions with little meaning to those not familiar with boats and navigation. I figure the book could easily have been cut down to a half of its length without losing any plot or meaningful descriptive material.

There's not much else to say. The evil villain turns out to be a double agent working for the British, which all but the dimmest reader will suspect from the introduction of his character. Whenever danger seems around the corner, it turns out to be nothing. There is no descriptive material that would be of interest to the antiquarian or historical enthusiast. One reviewer who said "it gives remarkable insights into the culture and attitudes of the period" must have been reading a different book.

I'm not sure who this novel would appeal to, and I suspect that it was chosen as an Oxford classic because the novelist died for the politically correct cause of supporting Irish independence. Yawn.

The best thing about the novel is this edition (Oxford Classics green cover with white portrait), and the introduction by David Trotter provides a nice background on early thrillers and spy stories.

Beautiful book, wonderful piece of literature ...
This is a truly beautiful book ... Although it is said to be the first book in the genre, it is not alike to most of the spy novels I read. The plot develops slowly, and for the most part of the story nothing significant happens, but this is exactly what makes it special and valuable. Heroes are very human, they are prone to fantasies and mistakes, and for a long time it is not clear if the spy plot was a reality or the creation of their vivid imagination. There is a scene I particularly enjoyed, and if it were not written at the very beginning of the century, it might have been a satire of modern spy novels. Here I refer to the scene when one of the main characters is eavesdropping under the window of a house, but cannot hear much because the curtains are drawn! This is a jewel. I also enjoyed descriptions of sailing in the sands and of the life on the islands.

Read this book if you are interested in the study of human character, do not read it if you are just after thrill and entertainment, you won't find what you are looking for then. This book requires time.

Amateur spies in the great arms race of two empires
This has been called a great yachting adventure. Two young Englishmen explore the German North Sea coast and discover things.
It is certainly some kind of travel book and has its merits as such. Not quite on par with O'Brian, but not useless either.
Among spy novels it is a fairly early specimen of a new species, written in the early 20th century and dealing with the maritime arms race between the Kaiser's Germany and the overwhelming sea power of his British cousins.
As a propaganda pamphlet it tries to alert the British public and rulers to the dangers of Germany's secretive building of a new navy.
It is also an educational novel: we follow the narrator in his transformation from an unbearably snobbish upper class fool towards becoming a man with both feet on the ground, or rather, quite frequently, on a wet little yacht. (The first two chapters are a caricature of this snobbishness, reminding me of Orwell's dictum, in paraphrase, that the English are one family, but that unfortunately the wrong members of the family are in charge.)

While I am not bowled over with enthusiasm for this piece of fiction history, it is certainly no waste of time either. If it were a little less of a pamphlet and if it were a little less obvious in everything, it might be considered a decent sea adventure book.

There is a puzzling biographical postscriptum. This eloquent partizan for English alertness remembers a few years later that he is actually Irish and he becomes a Sinn Feiner, which eventually leads to his execution for treason. How very odd.

Great book, but almost tiny.
The book arrived and was in excellent condition. However, it was smaller that even a regular paper-back book. Though the print is excellent, I think some mention should be made that it is a "mini-book".