the brigand ebook

„The Brigand” (1927) is a collection of a dozen fast-paced, frothy crime capers set in a Britain still reeling from 1926’s General Strike. An excellent collection of connected short stories all about likeable conman Anthony Newton. Newton returning from the Great War and unable to find employment decides start redistributing wealth in his own way. Deprived of a legal source of income and faced with...

I am a Veiled Man. Openly, I confess myself a vagabond and a brigand. Living here, in the heart of the Great Desert, six moons march from Algiers, and a thousand miles beyond the French outposts, theft is, with my nomadic tribe, their natural industry–a branch of education, in fact. We augment the meagreness of our herds by extorting ransoms from some of our neighbours, and completely despoiling others....

The hero, the discharged Army Captain Reginald Hex, was the prototype for Anthony Newland, whose adventures were related several years later in The Brigand (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1927). The first two Hex stories were revised and published as Anthony Newland stories in that collection under the titles „Buried Treasure” and „A Contribution to Charity”. The stories are adventurous and well written...