The Black Box

Written by E. Phillips Oppenheim

Narrated by Richard Kilmer

ou're in luck, Alfred," he declared. "That's the most interesting man in New York-one of the most interesting in the world. That's Sanford Quest." "Who's he?"

"You haven't heard of Sanford Quest?"

"Never in my life."

The young man whose privilege it was to have been born and lived all his days in New York, drank half a glassful of wine and leaned back in his chair. Words, for a few moments, were an impossibility.

"Sanford Quest," he pronounced at last, "is the greatest master in criminology the world has ever known. He is a magician, a scientist, the Pierpont Morgan of his profession."

"Say, do you mean that he is a detective?"

The New Yorker steadied himself with an effort. Such ignorance was hard to realise-harder still to deal with.

"Yes," he said simply, "you could call him that-just in the same way you could call Napoleon a soldier or Lincoln a statesman...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erika
• Release date: Oct 26, 2021

E. Phillips Oppenheim

E. Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946) was a bestselling English novelist. Born in London, he attended London Grammar School until financial hardship forced his family to withdraw him in 1883. For the next two decades, he worked for his father’s business as a leather merchant, but pursued a career as a writer on the side. With help from his father, he published his first novel, Expiation, in 1887, launching a career that would see him write well over one hundred works of fiction. In 1892, Oppenheim married Elise Clara Hopkins, with whom he raised a daughter. During the Great War, Oppenheim wrote propagandist fiction while working for the Ministry of Information. As he grew older, he began dictating his novels to a secretary, at one point managing to compose seven books in a single year. With the success of such novels as The Great Impersonation (1920), Oppenheim was able to purchase a villa in France, a house on the island of Guernsey, and a yacht. Unable to stay in Guernsey during the Second World War, he managed to return before his death in 1946 at the age of 79.