My latest choice in Patti Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books series is Russell Thorndike's
Doctor Syn: A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh (1915).
The mild-mannered vicar Doctor Syn is boring his congregation with his Sunday sermon when the British excise men (read tax guys—boo, hiss) arrive in their part of eighteenth-century Kent. Soon strange things start to happen: ghostly riders are seen in the marsh, the local physician with the unfortunate name of Dr. Pepper is knifed, a mulatto with connections to a notorious pirate disappears, and Syn seems to be up to more than saving souls.
For those who enjoy the derring-do of Baroness Orczy's
The Scarlet Pimpernel or Rafael Sabatini's
Captain Blood, this book is right up their street. I am currently trying to work the word "Zounds!" into my everyday conversation.
Wounded at Gallipoli during World War I, actor and author Arthur
Russell Thorndike (1885–1972) was the brother (and biographer) of actress
Dame Sybil Thorndike and appeared in Laurence Olivier's films of
Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III.
Doctor Syn was filmed twice—in 1937 starring George Arliss in the title role and in 1963 featuring Patrick McGoohan as the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (the latter recently released on DVD). Thorndike himself also played Syn.
After
Doctor Syn: A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh Thorndike wrote the following:
Doctor Syn on the High Seas (1935)Doctor Syn Returns (1936)
The Further Adventures of Doctor Syn (1936)The Courageous Exploits of Doctor Syn (1938)
The Amazing Quest of Doctor Syn (1939)
The Shadow of Doctor Syn (1944)
The Slype (1927; not featuring Syn but including other characters from the series)
This podcast from London's Resonance 104.4 fm discusses how Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner (considered by some to be the ultimate fate of McGoohan's spy John Drake from Danger Man/Secret Agent Man) has continued in other forms of media.
