The Spy Paramount

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTIONMeet E. Phillips Oppenheim

Edward Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946) was an Englishman, born in London, the son of a leather merchant. For twenty years he worked in his father’s business, while beginning to publish novels. His first, subsidized by his father, barely broke even, but before long he was successful, enough so that a rich admirer, also in the leather business, bought out the firm and put Oppenheim on salary to support his writing career. Oppenheim soon hit his stride and became a bestseller, one of the most popular writers of his generation. He produced one hundred and sixteen novels and thirty-nine collections of short stories. At least twenty-one films were produced from his work, mostly in the silent era, including three versions of his most popular work, The Great Impersonation.

Oppenheim’s specialty was the fast-moving, glamorous suspense thriller, written in a breezy, easy-to-read style. He was the epitome of the “entertainment” writer of his day, without any pretensions of literature. His stories are filled with high society people, spies, diplomats, and political intrigue, without much actual detection, so, it has been remarked, his relationship to the formal mystery story is slight. One difference between Oppenheim and many other writers who described glamorous high society was that he had actually been there. Once he was successful, he had a yacht and a villa on the French Riviera, where he spent his winters and moved in elite circles.

In his most famous work, The Great Impersonation, a German and an Englishman, who could be identical twins, meet together in Africa and note their uncanny resemblance. Then the German plots to make the Englishman disappear and steal his identity in order to carry on an espionage mission. The trick of the book is that the reader follows the man’s return to England without ever knowing which man has returned. Is it the Englishman or the German impostor? Even those closest to him don’t know.

Oppenheim was widely admired in his day. John Buchan, the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps called him “My master in fiction.”

—Darrell Schweitzer

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania