Résumé
Résumé de Au service secret
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
This book is for readers who like clue-hunting puzzles, spy stories from the Great War years, and short tales you can read one evening at a time, told by a storyteller with a pipe and a pile of souvenirs.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
On Secret Service is a collection of detective stories by William Nelson Taft, set in the years around the First World War. A retired Secret Service man named Bill Quinn tells them to a friend, one evening at a time, in his den full of odd relics. Each relic holds a case: a Chinese hatchet, a quarter, a stuffed white mouse, a scrap of silk.
The agents come from many branches. Some work for the Secret Service. Others serve Customs, the Post Office, the Internal Revenue Bureau, the Pension Bureau, the State Department or the Department of Justice. They chase German saboteurs and spies, smugglers, counterfeiters, moonshiners, embezzlers and blackmailers.
You get a quick tale of wits and nerve in every chapter. The cases turn on small things: a flashing electric sign, a library shelf, a wad of chewing gum, a pipe bowl. Quinn's own voice keeps the tales warm and chatty. The first story begins in a Washington hotel lobby, with a young agent named Jimmy Callahan and a threat to a troop ship.
Dans ce résumé
- 1Flashes in the night over NorfolkFree
- 2Common sense solves a vanished fortune
- 3Trouble from Mexico City and Berlin
- 4A librarian, a sweetheart and Number 859
- 5Smugglers, spies and a violin record
- 6Disguises, mountains and moonshine
- 7Codes, cakes and clues in plain sight
- 8Women who solve cases and a smile at fate
- 9How the stories are told
Point clé 1 sur 9
Flashes in the night over Norfolk
The frame is simple. Bill Quinn, kept at a desk job in the Treasury by a leg injury from a counterfeiting raid, tells his stories to a friend. The first is about Jimmy Callahan in the spring of 1918. German submarines are sinking ships off the coast, and the sinking of the Carolina suggests someone ashore is feeding them news of sailing dates.
The Chief sends Callahan to find the leak. He has almost nothing to go on, only a file with a boast from a German officer that the U-boats will be told when ships sail. Callahan reasons that the biggest prize will be a troop transport. The War Department tells him one ship, the America, will leave Norfolk at daybreak on Monday with twelve thousand men.
He takes a room at a Norfolk hotel under a false name. Days of chasing rumors lead nowhere. A suspected German inventor is a photographer. A mystery woman is a family friend of two lieutenants. A clacking house holds a man with a typewriter.
Then, on Saturday evening, he gazes out of his window at the city lights. Something in his mind has been counting. A rooftop sign is blinking in a pattern that does not look right. He takes out his watch and begins to write down dots and dashes on an envelope.
From this one noticed detail the case opens up. Callahan phones Washington to a code expert named Thurber. Then he sets out to find who runs the sign, and the story moves to its sharp turn.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Au service secret
What is On Secret Service about?
It is a collection of detective tales told by a retired Secret Service man, Bill Quinn. They show agents of several government services catching spies, saboteurs, smugglers, counterfeiters, moonshiners and thieves in the years around the First World War.
Is On Secret Service based on true stories?
The tales are presented as real cases and use real offices, events and names such as the Black Tom explosion and Dr. Heinrich Albert. They are written as lively fiction and told by a character, so treat the details as storytelling.
Who is Bill Quinn in the book?
Quinn is a retired Secret Service man kept at a Treasury desk by an injured leg. He keeps relics from old cases in his den and tells a friend the story behind each one, which links all the chapters.
Do I need to read the chapters in order?
No. Each chapter is a complete tale with its own case, agents and clue, so you can read one an evening. Some agents and cases return, which adds to the fun when you read in order.
What kinds of cases appear in the book?
You find German saboteurs and code messages, diamond and silk smuggling, opium rings, moonshine stills, mail theft, counterfeit money, bank embezzlement, and blackmail letters. The clues are usually small, everyday objects.