Number Seventeen

Louis Tracy at his best with an author as star witness of a murder victim's final visitors and Winter and Furneaux, the legendary Scotland Yard detectives, popping in at just the right times to add their findings. It takes all hands on deck to solve this one before the bad guys win.

Though it was published later, the author's note explains it was written in 1914, which definitely lends an interesting view to Chinese history and which jolted me to look up Chinese history. In 1912 the last empire had fallen and the Republic arose, with China's first President being named in December 1911 and decades of civil war to follow, with a bit of a Japanese influence to the politics...definitely Tracy was paying attention to modern news.

I also appreciated that one faction of the Chinese was the problem and that others were presented as industrious and good, which wasn't always the case in old literature.