---
product_id: 12609881
title: "The Riddle of the Sands (Dover Thrift Editions) Paperback – May 19, 2011"
brand: "erskine childers"
price: "€ 17.95"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 10
url: https://www.desertcart.pt/products/12609881-the-riddle-of-the-sands-dover-thrift-editions-paperback-may
store_origin: PT
region: Portugal
---

# The Riddle of the Sands (Dover Thrift Editions) Paperback – May 19, 2011

**Brand:** erskine childers
**Price:** € 17.95
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** The Riddle of the Sands (Dover Thrift Editions) Paperback – May 19, 2011 by erskine childers
- **How much does it cost?** € 17.95 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.pt](https://www.desertcart.pt/products/12609881-the-riddle-of-the-sands-dover-thrift-editions-paperback-may)

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## Description

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐ 3.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Historically significant but tedious
  

*by Z***K on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 21, 2022*

Let me preface this review by saying that I generally enjoy Victorian and Edwardian fiction.  I love H. Ryder Haggard and Ellen Wood, for example, and have read almost all of their works.My reason for mentioning all that is just to make clear that my criticisms of The Riddle of the Sands are not based on a dislike of elaborate, gradually developed narratives per se.  My problem is that even for something written in 1903, The Riddle of the Sands is slow to the point of tedium.  It has some very long passages packed with details that will be almost incomprehensible to anyone who (like me) knows little about sailing.  More importantly, after one wades through all the sailing lore, the pay-off is really quite anemic.  Don't get your hopes up for a conclusion that is even moderately thrilling.I will grant that this book was extremely influential.  I did not find it particularly compelling as literature, however.

### ⭐⭐ 2.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Frustration leading to skimming
  

*by C***M on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 9, 2009*

Childers' novel was a real disappointment.  After starting to read the original Ian Fleming James Bond novels for Fleming's centennial, my interest in spy novels was piqued and I decided to make a survey of them.  I was going to start with The 39 Steps until I came across The Riddle of the Sands.  I wasn't expecting a Bond-style thriller, and I came with an open mind, but this was a tedious and underwhelming story with little general historical interest.Originally published in 1903, the story is a first-person account of a pre-WWI British Foreign Office employee who gets caught up in the discovery of German invasion plans while on a sailing holiday.  The book was written as a serious account of events for the expressed purpose of jarring the public into recognition of the German threat.While the plot sounds like a decent one for a spy novel, and while the reader with an interest in historical fiction might expect to find period interest, most of the book is detailed accounts of sailing, complete with nautical terms and descriptions with little meaning to those not familiar with boats and navigation.  I figure the book could easily have been cut down to a half of its length without losing any plot or meaningful descriptive material.There's not much else to say.  The evil villain turns out to be a double agent working for the British, which all but the dimmest reader will suspect from the introduction of his character.  Whenever danger seems around the corner, it turns out to be nothing.  There is no descriptive material that would be of interest to the antiquarian or historical enthusiast.  One reviewer who said "it gives remarkable insights into the culture and attitudes of the period" must have been reading a different book.I'm not sure who this novel would appeal to, and I suspect that it was chosen as an Oxford classic because the novelist died for the politically correct cause of supporting Irish independence.  Yawn.The best thing about the novel is this edition (Oxford Classics green cover with white portrait), and the introduction by David Trotter provides a nice background on early thrillers and spy stories.

### ⭐⭐⭐ 3.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Nautical Thriller
  

*by E***T on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 7, 2011*

Ken Follett called this book (originally published in 1903) the "first modern thriller." It *is* modern in that its hero is not a nobleman or a professional spy, but an ordinary fellow caught up in a web of international intrigue. The book is a little slow getting started, but picks up its pace as it goes along.I mostly enjoyed this book, but I had a few issues with the story and with this Kindle edition. The story is about sailing-- the two protagonists are in a small sailboat in the North Sea when they uncover a German naval plot aimed at England-- and the book is full of nautical language. If you are a landlubber like me, and don't know your jib from your fo'c'sle, some of the action is a little hard to follow. The author includes a few maps, which would be very helpful in following the story, but in the Kindle edition, the maps are very hard to read, and impossible to turn back to every time they are referenced unless you bookmark them. There are also a few typos in the Kindle book-- nothing too annoying, but the word "I" usually appears as "1," for example.Overall, not a bad read, especially if you know something about sailing or if you are interested in the history of the spy story. Personally, I much prefer John Buchan's "The 39 Steps" (1915), a slightly later spy novel which is truly "modern" in the way it grabs your attention from chapter 1. That book, and some other early spy novels, are included in an excellent Kindle anthology called 
  
The Ultimate Spy Collection (Seven Books)







  
  
     (check out my review of that e-book).

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*Product available on Desertcart Portugal*
*Store origin: PT*
*Last updated: 2026-03-21*