A FICTION HOUSE PRESS FACSIMILE REPRINT
A STIRRING ADVENTURE TALE OF THE ROMNEY MARSH
Russell Thorndyke has evidently let himself go and has had a good old swashbuckling time of it in writing "Dr. Syn", a novel of adventure, the scene of which is laid in Kent in the days of George III. Romney Marsh, the lonely region where much of the action takes place, was continually visited by night riders, fiendish figures dimly seen by the glow from the Jack-o'-lanterns which they carried. In the village lived a person scarcely less mysterious than they--a genial, kindly vicar, who sang quite inappropriate snatches of pirate songs. The refrain which fell oftenest from his lips was the favorite chanty of the redoutable pirate chief, Clegg, hanged, according to rumor, a decade before.
The story opens with the arrival on the marsh of a troop of royal soldiers, sent to detect and seize the smugglers who had long operated there. A series of mysterious murders ensue, the suspected criminal being a mulatto sailor who seems to gather a good bit of evidence for the officers despite the fact that his tongue has been cut out and his ears lopped off in previous adventures. The story moves along with a truly boyish gusto, and the final scene, where Dr. Syn, revealed as Clegg the pirate, dies as horrible a death as any of his victims, is sanguinary enough to satisfy a reader of Nick Carter.