Riddle of the Sands

The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is a patriotic British 1903 novel by Erskine Childers.It is a novel that &quote;owes a lot to the wonderful adventure novels of writers like Rider Haggard, that were a staple of Victorian Britain&quote;; perhaps more significantly, it was a spy novel that &quote;established a formula that included a mass of verifiable detail, which gave authenticity to the story - the same ploy that would be used so well by John Buchan, Ian Fleming, John le Carre and many others.&quote; Ken Follett called it &quote;the first modern thriller.&quote;