Prince or Chauffeur?  A Story of Newport  -  1911

Lawrence Perry
176 pages
genre  -  Adventure
my rating  -  4 out of 5 stars

Usually when I read a book with the intent of reviewing for this blog, I take lots of notes: names, ages, descriptions, facts, and interesting quotations.  After a few pages into the story, I became so engrossed in the tale, I forgot to do this.  I consider that a good sign.

The first words of the book are:  "John Armitage, Lieutanant U. S. N., followed the porter into the rear car of the midnight express for Boston..."  Lt. Armitage talks to the porter to pass the time until the train is ready to leave.  When the porter tells John that there was a man asking after him, he gets a description of the stranger and goes searching for him.  John sees the man just as he is getting into a taxi cab.

"'Missed him,' he said in answer to the porter's look of inquiry.

'Friend of yo's, suh?'

'Well,' said the officer, smiling grimly, 'I should have liked to shake hands with him.'

His desire would have been keener could he in any way have known the nature of the message which the curious stranger had sent to a squalid little house on William Street in Newport:

A. leave here to torpedo station on midnight train."

So begins this wonderful tale of train and boat rides, a pretty young lady, a Russian prince, a missing torpedo control, disguises, spies and some romance through it all.

About the author  - 

I could very little about the author on the internet. 

Lawrence Perry (1874-1954) was a sports reporter and drama critic for several newspapers, and for the North American Newspaper Alliance, and he also became an author of novels, plays, articles, short stories, and poems.