The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers (Smith, Elder & Co)
About a year ago, the Wadden Sea - an intertidal zone between the Frisian Islands and the German and Dutch North Sea coasts - became a Unesco natural world heritage site. Its spooky seascape of mist-shrouded sandbars and shallow waters is the mesmeric setting of the first modern spy thriller, Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands.
With his only novel, which swiftly became an explosive best-seller in 1903, Childers made way for Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum, Ken Follett, Graham Greene, John Le Carre, and every other author of the dark arts of espionage and international subterfuge.
The Riddle of the Sands itself is partly inspired by 'invasion-genre' books of the late 19th century, such as H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, and George Chesney's epic, The Battle of Dorking, in which Germany's threat to Britain is explored. But Childers is a much subtler storyteller.
The action begins with Foreign Office high-flier Charles Carruthers - the narrator - accepting batty sailor Arthur Davies' invitation to go duck-shooting around Germany's Schleswig fjord.
Davies, an old chum from Oxford University, has a hidden agenda though. And Carruthers and the reader have no idea what the riddle of the title is until it emerges from the foggy Nordsee, by which time the book is unputdownable.
Published a decade before the first world war broke out, it so cleverly highlighted England's coastal defensive weaknesses and the proximity of the German threat that The Riddle of the Sands became a lasting influence on Britain's naval policy.