Resumen
Resumen de La máscara
Para quién es
Readers who like old-fashioned suspense, detective chases, secret identities and a love story tested by danger will find plenty here. It suits anyone drawn to Edwardian New York, diamond fields and fast, cliffhanger chapters.
De qué trata este libro
The Mask is a New York thriller by Arthur Hornblow, set in the years before the First World War. It follows a rich Wall Street promoter named Kenneth Traynor, his devoted wife Helen, and a plot that grows around a pair of enormous diamonds. The book mixes a marriage story, a detective hunt and an adventure on the South African veld.
You meet the Traynors in their Gramercy Park house on the day before Kenneth is due to sail for Cape Town. News of a vast diamond find has reached the papers, and he is to bring home a stone worth nearly a million dollars. Helen is full of dread. Around them move a smooth fencing master, a watchful valet, a sharp young lawyer and a company president with a fine voice and an eye on the main chance.
What you get is a fast, clear story of disguise, greed and suspicion, told in short scenes and packed with cliffhangers. It asks how well you can know the person you love. Let us begin with the farewell at the dock, where a feeling of danger first takes hold.
En este resumen
- 1A Wife's Dread Before the VoyageFree
- 2A Valet Who Listens at Doors
- 3The Sailing and the Fencing Master's Insult
- 4Two Starving Men on the Veld
- 5Brothers Meet and a Dark Idea Forms
- 6Parties, Detectives and a Dreadful Cable
- 7A Husband Who Is Not Quite Himself
- 8Suspicion Grows Around the Dinner Table
- 9The Master Criminal's Den in the Bronx
- 10What the Story Is Really About
Idea clave 1 de 10
A Wife's Dread Before the Voyage
The story opens at breakfast in the Traynor home on Gramercy Park. Kenneth reads of a huge diamond found near the land his company, the Americo-African Mining Company, is buying. He must leave at once on the Mauretania to secure options and bring the stone home. Helen, pale and tearful, begs him not to go.
She also tells him she was upset at dinner by Signor Keralio, his fencing master, who watched her all evening. Kenneth laughs it off. He explains that he has money tied up with Keralio in a Mexican silver mine and cannot afford a quarrel. Helen answers that she trusts the man no more than she trusts his face.
The house is in chaos with trunks, and the couple climb to the library to pack. There Helen thinks back to how they met. Kenneth pulled a child from thin ice in Central Park, and months later they were introduced at the opera. He proposed in this same library three years ago.
The chapter sets up what matters later. Kenneth is strong, honest and sure of himself, with one odd mark, a single white lock in the middle of his dark hair. Helen is loving, firm in her ideals and ruled by instinct. Her warnings in this scene are the first of many she will make and nobody will heed.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about La máscara
What is The Mask by Arthur Hornblow about?
It tells of a New York promoter who goes to South Africa for two giant diamonds and meets his long-lost twin. Back home, his wife senses that the husband who returns is not the man she married, while a lawyer hunts a criminal.
Who is Signor Keralio in The Mask?
Keralio is the polished fencing master Kenneth takes lessons from. Helen distrusts him from the start. Detectives find that he is a wanted criminal with many aliases, and he plans to win Helen by force and revenge.
Why does Kenneth Traynor have a white lock of hair?
It is a natural oddity of his hair, a single white lock in the centre of his forehead. Kenneth jokes that it is his trademark. It becomes the main sign by which others recognise him, and it matters later in the story.
Is The Mask a true story?
No, it is a work of fiction by Arthur Hornblow, set in Edwardian New York and South Africa. Its diamond rush draws on real events of the era, but the characters and plot are invented for the thriller.
Is The Mask easy to read?
Yes, in the sense that it moves briskly. The chapters are short, the dialogue is lively and each one ends on a hook. The plot is clear, with a lawyer and a young detective guiding the reader through the mystery.