The Black Gang

Although the First World War is over, it seems that the hostilities are not, and when Captain Hugh 'Bulldog' Drummond discovers that a stint of bribery and blackmail is undermining England's democratic tradition, he forms the Black Gang, bent on tracking down the perpetrators of such plots. They set a trap to lure the criminal mastermind behind these subversive attacks to England, and all is going to plan until Bulldog Drummond accepts an invitation to tea at the Ritz with a charming American clergyman and his dowdy daughter. Herman Cyril McNeile (1888-1937), commonly known as Cyril McNeile and publishing under the name H. C. McNeile or the pseudonym "Sapper," was a British soldier and author. Drawing on his experiences in the trenches during the First World War, he started writing short stories and getting them published in the Daily Mail. As serving officers in the British Army were not permitted to publish under their own names, he was given the pen name "Sapper" by Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the Daily Mail; the nickname was based on that of his corps, the Royal Engineers. McNeile's war stories were seen by reviewers as honest portrayals of the war, with British and American reviewers in the mainstream press praising his realism and avoidance of sentimentality in dealing with his subject matter. Reviewing Men, Women, and Guns for The Times Literary Supplement, Francis Henry Gribble wrote that "Sapper has been successful in previous volumes of war stories ... When the time comes for picking out the writers whose war fiction has permanent value, his claim to be included in the list will call for serious examination." The reviewer of Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E. for The Atlanta Constitution reminded its readers that McNeile "has been called the foremost literary genius of the British army." Jaillant observes that once McNeile moved from war stories to thrillers, with the concurrent re-positioning of advertising and marketing by Hodder & Stoughton, the reviewers also treated him differently, and presented him as "a writer of thrillers, without any pretension to literary seriousness." When reviewing Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back for The New York Times, the critic observed that "if you like a good knock-down-and-drag-out yarn with excitement and violence on nearly every page, you can't go wrong on Bulldog Drummond"; for the novel Bulldog Drummond at Bay, the reviewer considered that "as a piece of fictional melodrama, the book is first rate." In the British market, The Times Literary Supplement also characterised him as a mass-market thriller writer, which contrasted with its consideration of his earlier works.