The Golden Face: A Great 'Crook' Romance

By William Le Queux

In order to ease my conscience and, further, to disclose certain facts which for the past year or two have, I know, greatly puzzled readers of our daily newspapers, I have decided to here reveal some very curious and, perhaps, sensational circumstances. In fact, after much perplexity and long consideration, I have resolved, without seeking grace or favor, to make a clean breast of all that happened to me, and to leave the reader to judge of my actions, and either to condemn or to condone my offenses. I will begin at the beginning. It has been said that service in the Army has upset the average man's chances of prosperity in civil life. That, I regret, is quite true. When I, George Hargreave, came out of the Army after the Armistice, I found myself, like many hundreds of other ex-officers, completely at a loose end, without a shilling in the world over and above the gratuity of between two and three hundred pounds to which my period of commissioned service entitled me. Grown accustomed during the war, however, to fending for myself and overcoming difficulties and problems of one sort and another, I at once set to work to look about for any kind of employment for which I fancied I might be fitted. After answering many advertisements to no purpose, I one day happened upon one in The Times which rather stirred my curiosity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Classics
• Release date: Jan 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781609771799

William Le Queux

William Le Queux (1864-1927) was an Anglo-French journalist, novelist, and radio broadcaster. Born in London to a French father and English mother, Le Queux studied art in Paris and embarked on a walking tour of Europe before finding work as a reporter for various French newspapers. Towards the end of the 1880s, he returned to London where he edited Gossip and Piccadilly before being hired as a reporter for The Globe in 1891. After several unhappy years, he left journalism to pursue his creative interests. Le Queux made a name for himself as a leading writer of popular fiction with such espionage thrillers as The Great War in England in 1897 (1894) and The Invasion of 1910 (1906). In addition to his writing, Le Queux was a notable pioneer of early aviation and radio communication, interests he maintained while publishing around 150 novels over his decades long career.

Reviews for The Golden Face

[eireannach_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Golden Face by William Le Queux is the not particularly interesting tale of a Post-WWI soldier who takes up a position as secretary and chauffeur to a businessman, only to discover that his boss is, in fact, head of a criminal gang. Le Queux is not as fluid a writer as, say, E. Phillips Oppenheim, and so it's not really a surprise that this book has been forgotten. I read it on my Kindle using OpenLibrary.org.