Beautiful French actress Marguerite complained to one of her friends about a nobleman who had mistreated her brother, Armand, and thus accidentally gained the nobleman a date with the guillotine. She confesses this to her new husband, Sir Percy Blakeney, but without any details to explain her action—and the marriage instantly turns into a mannered truce of mutual contempt. Marguerite, lonely and confused, humanizes the us-against-them action by illustrating how good people can do bad things when the pressure ramps up, as when the French agent Chauvelin approaches her for help in identifying the widely admired Pimpernel. If she does not cooperate, Chauvelin will denounce her brother as a spy and ensure his death. Marguerite is up against it, with no one to talk to, not even her husband. What the reader knows or quickly figures out, of course, is that her husband is the Scarlet Pimpernel.

  Here we have Maass’s idea of “Conflicting ideals or values create tension” taken to extreme. Percy is not a snob, but the victims are his friends. Marguerite agrees in theory with the revolutionaries, but not in practice. She is closer to her brother than anyone in the world, especially given the temporary emotional distance of her husband, but does not want more blood on her hands and feels the dashing Pimpernel embodies all that is good in humanity. The political has become extremely personal to her.

  Thus does Orczy “combine high public stakes with high personal stakes.” Then, although Orczy wrote her book a hundred years after these events, she “conveys a sense of the times” by taking current locations and explaining their use then, and tossing in details such as the average person’s fear of the plague. She “portrays historical forces and social trends through characters” who all, major or minor, have firm opinions regarding their world and its facets.

  As for Percy Blakeney, the Pimpernel: Percy remains one of the most unique characters ever created. He is a superhero, a master of disguise and keen student of human foibles with a preternatural competence for moving around unseen in a foreign country, despite being tall, blond and English. He is capable of outwitting his enemies with an embarrassing insouciance, going so far as to pen a silly poem to his alter ego and then recite it to his enemies:

  They seek him here, they seek him there,

  Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.

  Is he in heaven, or is he in hell,

  That damned elusive, Pimpernel?

  Orczy builds up her hero for us at every turn until we are thoroughly schooled in his wonders. Yet he is also an antihero, rich, bland, considered by all who know him—at least on the surface—to have the keenest of fashion sense only to make up for having no other sense at all. Dilettante by day, hero by night, he seems the obvious ancestor to Zorro, the Shadow, and Batman. He is barely mentioned until the third chapter, does not appear until the sixth, and we are given no insight into his thoughts until the sixteenth, and then only as they concern his wife. We never read a scene from his point of view and never learn what he thinks of anyone else, or how he became so adept at his work or why he chose to enter the fray. Is he passionately committed to the care of human life or is he simply a bored rich boy looking for a little adventure? We suspect it’s the former, but Percy gives no hint. The bored rich boy act works well for him, and he sticks to it. “The highest character qualities are self-sacrifice and forgiveness,” Maass says. Percy risks not only his safety but his self-image, letting the rest of his society mock him, the privileged son of nobility, as an idiot.

  On a side note, Percy’s catchphrase “Sink me!” used so liberally on stage and screen, is never uttered. Instead, characters of all genders and ages say “Faith!” to express surprise, irritation, confusion, or any other emotion— constantly. Also, Marguerite and the pursuing Chauvelin are old friends, not ex-lovers, as in the stage musical; Orczy does not allude that they were ever more than acquaintances, to the disappointment of the prurient.

  All the characters—even the villain—have Maass’s suggested self-sacrificing motives. The Pimpernel and his team take every step while acutely aware that they are the last and only hope of entire families. If they fail, not only aristocrats but their children will be slain. Chauvelin pursues both these groups for the greater good of making France a more egalitarian state (though we suspect that pride, challenge, and a touch of sadism are also present). Marguerite is desperate to save both her brother and her husband and is constantly reminded that she cannot do both, and what is worse, is forced more than once to choose. Orczy even mastered the art of ending chapters with a cliffhanger to keep things moving.

  She did all this without the benefit of Maass’s book, or even Zuckerman’s Writing the Blockbuster Novel, which wouldn’t come along for another ninety-one years. In fact, except for the telling and not showing of the characters’ lengthy internal musings, which can be excused as characteristic of novels written at the time, it seems Baroness Orczy wrote as near perfect a thriller as is possible. She provides every required factor: a sympathetic and unique hero, a coldhearted but intelligent adversary, a stunningly distinctive setting, the highest personal and public stakes possible, and a pace that will keep readers of every century turning the pages.

  Lisa Black spent the happiest five years of her life in a morgue. After ten years as a secretary, she went back to school for a degree in biology. In her job as a forensic scientist at the Cleveland area coroner’s office, she analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, blood, and many other forms of trace evidence, as well as crime scenes. Now she works as a latent print examiner for a police department in Florida, dealing with fingerprints and crime scenes. She has testified as an expert witness in over fifty trials. She has also written two books under the name Elizabeth Becka,Trace Evidence and Unknown Mean s. Her novel,Takeover, appeared in 2008 and its sequel,Evidence of Murder, in 2009.

  23

  Edgar Rice Burroughs’s

  TARZAN OF THE APES (1912)

  W. Craig Reed

  Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) was a mythmaker of the highest order. In 1912, he began his writing career with “Under the Moons of Mars” for The All-Story Magazine. That same year, he wrote two novels for the same magazine. One of those novels was Tarzan of the Apes. From then until his death in 1950, Burroughs penned almost seventy science fiction, western, historical, and jungle adventure novels. He purchased a ranch near Los Angeles in 1919, which he named Tarzana, and the citizens of the community incorporated under that name in 1928. He served during World War II as the oldest war correspondent. The Burroughs crater on Mars is named in his honor.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs did not enter this world destined to be a writer. He did not spend his childhood immersed in fictional worlds where heroes swing from trees, rescue damsels in distress, and call upon nature to assist. Danton Burroughs, in the foreword to Tarzan, My Father, the book I coauthored with Johnny Weissmuller, Jr., described his grandfather as “restless in other professions he’d tried, be it railroad policeman in Idaho, or member of the Seventh Cavalry chasing Apaches in the last years of the Wild West in the 1800s. Finally, he tried writing, and his third novel was Tarzan of the Apes. That was in 1912.”

  The son of a businessman, Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from the Michigan Military Academy in 1895 and failing the entrance exam for West Point, he enlisted with the cavalry at Fort Grant, in the Arizona Territory. Following his army stint, Burroughs worked for his father and married Emma Hulbert in 1900. By 1911, after years of meager earnings, he became disillusioned with the writing in pulp fiction magazines. This fueled a desire to write his own stories, the third of which was “Tarzan of the Apes.”

  That novel brought to life a cultural icon. A muscled protagonist in dozens of movies, most of them starring Johnny Weissmuller during the days of black-and-white film, Tarzan still looms large as the hero whom boys emulate and girls admire. As one of those boys, I recall the first time I heard the epic story of Tarzan.

  While turning the page, my grandfather’s voice rumbled like a volcano on the verge of a cataclysmic event: “. . . and Tarzan, the young Lord Greystoke, rolled unconscious upon the dead and decaying vegetation . . .”

  Unconscious? Did that mean . . .?

  My heart raced. How could it be that Tarzan of the Apes had just met his fate at the hand of a giant gorilla?

  My grandfather set the book on the nightstand and rubbed his tired eyes. Dozens of lines covered his face, etched by time and toil and the tolerance of things my young mind had yet to comprehend. His voice now soft, he said, “That’s all for tonight. We’ll read some more tomorrow.”

  Flinging the blankets from my chest, I sat up straight. “No! You can’t stop now, Grandpa! I have to know what happens next!”

  Grandpa smiled and placed a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. “Don’t we all.”

  With that, he turned off the light and left the room.

  My blanket now clutched tightly about my neck, I shivered as every darkened shadow threatened to devour me like an angry lion, and every strange noise announced the stealthy approach of a maneater—eyes glaring and fangs dripping with saliva.

  I glanced at the book on the nightstand, illuminated now only by the dim moonlight filtered through half-open window shades. The white and swirling block letters appeared as native dancers set against a purple sky. TARZAN OF THE APES ran across the top, and the name EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS across the bottom. In the center, a fierce lion struggled in vain against the strong grip and lethal blade wielded by the King of the Apes.

  I smiled. Though surrounded by evils lurking in the jungle of my world, with Tarzan but an arm’s length away, fear no longer owned me. I closed my eyes and dreamed of eating delicious fruits and swinging through the trees, high above the angry carnivores below.

  Many years later, when given the assignment to once again explore the pages of the first title in the Tarzan series, I initially had misgivings. Although the book became a best seller in the 1900s, before the Internet made us all “Google stupid,” I questioned whether this thriller could stand the test of time. Would not this manuscript now receive only rejections from the publishing community? After all, writing that employs an omniscient point of view and velvety English-accented prose, and lacks a flawed protagonist, would never get past a discerning literary agent today, let alone find its way onto a bookshelf.

  But as I turned the first page, I rediscovered something I had found decades earlier. Something that filled my chest with pounding anticipation, my eyes with joyful mist, and my soul with a wonder and excitement I hadn’t known since childhood. Once again, I felt compelled to keep turning pages. Then I smiled as I recalled the protest voiced to my grandfather, so long ago, when he dared to stop reading for the night.

  “I have to know what happens next!”

  “Don’t we all,” Grandpa replied.

  One could say that this is the essence of a thriller—that special something that sweeps us along like a rushing river that threatens to shatter us against the rocks. But most of all, that special something that keeps us wanting to know what happens next. Few writers can lay claim to a mastery of all these ingredients in the way that Edgar Rice Burroughs blended them into one of the best thrillers ever written. Burroughs brilliantly splashes each chapter with cliffhangers, suspense, and foreshadowing, as evidenced by a short but powerful sentence near the beginning:

  It was on the morning of the second day that the first link was forged in what was destined to form a chain of circumstances ending in a life for one then unborn such as has never been paralleled in the history of man.

  Only somebody devoid of curiosity could dare put this book down after reading such a proclamation.

  I have to know what happens next!

  When Burroughs wrote his Tarzan books, the world was in desperate need of a hero. Rumblings of the First World War threatened world peace. Soon, a deadly influenza epidemic, starvation, and economic upheavals claimed the lives of millions. Enter Tarzan, King of the Jungle and Master of the Beasts. One fierce man who engaged the wild and the foreign, the bestial and the brutal, and defended us against the enemies and ideologies that threatened our way of life. A man who possessed the strength to strangle a lion and the cunning to manipulate a tribe of savage aborigines. Yet a man whose gentle heart could win the love of a beautiful Baltimore girl.

  Critics claim that Burroughs’s works “failed to gather critical acclaim, yet influenced a generation.” But Burroughs never courted critical acclaim. He had as his only goal to entertain, to sweep us away, if only for a day, from our worries and our fears. To bring a smile, a gasp, and perhaps a tear of joy. To bring us a hero: courageous, pure, merciful, and even romantic.

  And for this young boy, and then again for this half-life writer who hopes to someday wield a pen half as well, Edgar Rice Burroughs has done just that.

  W. Craig Reed is the author of the thriller DNA (2008) and the nonfiction book Crazy Ivan: A True Story of Submarine Espionage (2003). Craig is also the coauthor of Tarzan, My Father (2002) with the late Johnny Weissmuller, Jr.—a Borders Best book that chronicles the life of the most well-known Hollywood star of the early Tarzan films. Craig is currently writing Six Minutes, the thriller sequel to DNA, and Red November: Inside the Secret U.S.–Soviet Submarine War, a nonfiction book about Cold War espionage programs. Craig is also a general partner with Aventi Group, a marketing consulting firm in Northern California, which services leading technology firms. Craig has won numerous awards for client campaigns and professional writings, and is a former board member and vice president of the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association. A decorated veteran, Craig served during the Cold War as a submariner, navy diver, and special operations photographer, and completed several recon missions with Navy SEAL teams.

  24.

  Marie Belloc Lowndes’s

  THE LODGER (1913)

  James A. Moore

  There’s something to be said for a book’s longevity when it’s been made into five films (one of them by Alfred Hitchcock, another—the latest— in 2009) as well as a television drama. That’s the case with The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes. Lowndes (1868–1947) was born in France, to parents Louis Belloc and Elizabeth Rayner Parkes. Four years later, the family moved to London, but she spent a good deal of her childhood in both locations. Her first novel,The Heart of Penelope, was published in 1904, although by that time she was already an accomplished writer, much like her brother (Hilaire Belloc) and mother. Her last published work appeared in 1949, two years after her death. All told, she produced close to sixty novels, plays, and collections, many dealing with the criminal mind. 1913 saw the publication of The Lodger, her best known work, an intriguing study in how horrific events shape one family and the people connected to them. It sold over a million copies.

  The situation in The Lodger starts off desperate and gets worse from there. Ellen and Robert Bunting are in serious financial straits, and despite all of their best efforts, the aging and unemployed couple is having no luck getting in a better place. Then comes an ominous knock on the door. Set in London in Victorian times, the story is told in a straightforward fashion that emphasizes the increasing terror.

  Lowndes was one of the progenitors of the psychological thriller. The careful revelation of clues, the deliberate examination of the main characters and their gradually increasing awareness of the dangerous man dwelling with them provide a virtual road map of how to create tension without giving away too much.

  As the story evolves, a new lodger comes into the Bunting household, Mr. Sleuth, a man of obvious good upbringing and culture, who takes more than one room and pays for a full month in advance, enough money to keep the Buntings from the poorhouse.

  Now if only there weren’t all those unsettling murders taking place in the area.

  The Avenger is the name given to the killer, who bears a striking similarity in his levels of violence to Jack the Ripper. Other stories have taken a villain from history, but few have stood the test of time as well as The Lodger. I exclude only Bram Stoker’s Dracula from that assessment, but let’s remember the difference in timelines. The real Dracula had been dead for centuries, while the 1888 crimes of Jack the Ripper were still relatively fresh in people’s minds when Mrs. Lowndes penned her 1913 tale. For all anyone knew, the man was still alive.

  As the story progresses, it focuses on Ellen Bunting and her growing convictions that the man who saved her family from financial ruin might very well be the killer who is haunting London’s late night streets.

  The evolution of the tale is well handled. At the beginning, Ellen makes it clear that she has no desire to hear the sordid details of the murders, even though one of the family friends, Joe Chandler, is a detective working the case. But as time goes on and her suspicions grow, Mrs. Bunting’s desire to be kept in the dark is tested and finally replaced by a growing dread, even as she excuses all that she suspects in an effort to give her family the financial stability offered by the odd gentleman now living in their home.

  Ellen spends more and more time trying to disprove her suspicions and instead runs across more and more reasons to accuse the man she’s unconsciously trying to protect. Meanwhile, her husband, a visiting daughter, and the family friend who’s investigating the case discuss the sort of person capable of committing the atrocities and escaping without being seen. The author provides a careful look at the lives of one family and the slow disintegration of that unit as tensions mount and the murder spree continues.

  The plot has a simple, natural flow. There are no forced revelations, and the pacing, which might seem slow at first, is a fine complement to the mounting threat. There are no sudden revelations, no red herrings to confuse the issues. There is simply the examination of a husband and wife who begin to come to unsettling conclusions about their lodger at the same time that they struggle with financial worries and their extremely strict code of Victorian ethics. At one point, the mention of a reward being offered to anyone who learns the identity of the Avenger is enough to offend Ellen, who finds the notion of turning in a murderer for profit not only distasteful, but absolutely improper.