quippe ([personal profile] quippe) wrote2010-09-18 01:18 pm

I Spy: The Constantinople Caper by Graham Marks

The Blurb On The Back:

Trey can’t wait to go on a grand tour of Europe with his father – until he realizes it involves dusty museums and boring business meetings.

Then, out of the blue, everything changes and they’re boarding the Orient Express, destination: Constantinople. And he’s sure they’re being followed by a sinister man with a pencil mustache.

Who is this shadowy stranger?

Trey feels like his personal hero – star sleuth Trent ‘Pistol’ Gripp, from Black Ace magazine – with his own mystery to solve!

But it’s a mystery that’s about to turn deadly – when Trey finds himself on his own, and on the run, in a city that he soon discovers has a thousand hidden dangers ...

Welcome to 1927 and a world of spies, intrigue, guns and car chases – where nothing is what it seems and you can’t trust anybody ...




It’s 1927 and T Drummond MacIntyre III (Trey for short) is the youngest son of a wealthy Chicago industrialist. A keen fan of detective fiction, he’s excited when his father invites him to go on a grand tour of Europe, but his dreams of adventure soon disappear when his father disappears into business meetings for hours at a time, leaving Trey bored and fed up.

All this changes though when they board the Orient Express and Trey discovers that two of the passengers are trailing his father. As they go from city to city en route to Constantinople, he becomes certain that something sinister is going on and is determined to solve the mystery. But once in Constantinople Trey’s thirst for investigation puts him in danger and soon he’s relying on a strange mix of friends to help him get of trouble – and even save his life.

In this old fashioned adventure mystery peppered with spies and thrills, Marks puts the reader in the world of the 1920s when people didn’t have telephones and modern technology to get them out of scrapes. Marks has clearly done his research – there are references to historical events such as Lindberg’s ticker-tape parade in New York and Trey’s love for detectives is clearly influenced by the dime store fiction of the time – but sometimes the details get in the way of the action and makes the story drag.

Trey is a resourceful character – keen to get closer to his businessman father and desperate to do something interesting with his holiday. His Americanisms are a little overdone though and the reliance on 1920s slang became a little grating after a while. Still, he fares better than the two English children in the book – Christina and Arthur whose posh English accent and Bertie Wooster affections became very annoying, very quickly.

The story itself is bitty, with the meat of the story not becoming apparent until the final quarter when everything is explained within a couple of chapters. There’s plenty of action, which is well-handled – particularly a scene where Trey must escape down the laundry chute of a hotel.

All in all it’s an okay enough read, but the lack of cohesive plot and stereotypical characters makes me unlikely to read the next in the series.

The Verdict:

Although the historical setting is interesting, the story’s quite old-fashioned and the plot didn’t hold together well enough for me while the stereotypical dialogue for the American and English characters grated. It’s an okay read, but I won’t be reading on with the series.

Thanks to Usbourne Books for the free copy of this book.

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