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Title: The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service by Erskine Childers ISBN: 0-19-282318-3 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.35 (17 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Adventure in Northern Germany
Comment: I found this spy novel particularly interesting as I was born on the coastline described. Childers's descriptions of the Frisian Islands, the cities of northern Germany, and the dangerous tides are very accurate. That's what I like best about the book. The narrator, Anton Lesser, does a generally good job reading the book. In fact, he's much better than some other actors I've heard. However, his grasp of the German language is dreadful. Some sentences he reads in German are almost incomprehensible. This is inconsistent with the fact that the narrator of the story is supposed to speak German like a native. Listen if you love stories about ordinary people getting caught up in extraordinary events. Listen if you love the North Sea and Baltic coasts of Germany. Stay away if you love the German language.

Rating: 5
Summary: Puts most modern adventure novels to shame
Comment: I became aware of 'The Riddle Of The Sands' while reading Andrew Lownie's biography of my favorite author, John Buchan ('The Thirty-Nine Steps'). Buchan, a contemporary of Childers, reviewed a reissue of the book in 1926, calling it, "the best story of adventure published in the last quarter of a century". Well, 78 years later not much has changed. The writing is witty, intelligent and literate and the story at once simple yet complex. This novel is a perennial favorite among small-boat sailors, and is certainly "riddled" with enough sailing jargon to perplex most landlubbers. All of this is, however, very neatly integrated into a spy story that, like many of Buchan's wonderful novels, starts with the slenderest of threads and challenges the characters to figure out the skullduggery using sheer wit and intelligence.

It may sound trite, but they really don't make 'em like they used to.

Rating: 5
Summary: Always a delight
Comment: This book has been described to me both as "the best Yachting Book written" and "The book that saved Britain". Written in part as a wake-up call to the British Public at the turn of the last century -Childers (no stranger to Whitehall politics) was terrified that existing British strategy left the country wide open to an invasion from Germany- and in part as a celebration of a lifelong passion for boats and boating, the book "works" brilliantly. Even non-yachting enthusiasts will be drawn into the story, and those of us who have worked our way along a foggy coast by chart and compass will appreciate Childers' attention to detail and faithfulness to his subject. Overall I found the two principal characters well drawn, but the Germans are a bit cartoonish, and the hint of Romance towards the end was an un-needed distraction, other than that, this is a quite-un-put-downable novel of adventire & daring that MAY just have changed the course of history.