The Zeppelin’s Passenger by E. Phillips Oppenheim

Description

While the household above the North Sea sits to tea, the war arrives without warning: a Zeppelin drops her observation car onto Dutchman’s Common, and before anyone has done exclaiming over a salvaged German hat, a soaked and mud-stained stranger is at the door asking to be fed. Hamar Lessingham introduces himself as a neutral Swede saved from a capsized boat — and he carries letters from a British officer held in a German prison, written with a knowledge of the camp that no outsider should possess.

Lessingham’s charm and his dangerous usefulness cut the household between gratitude and dread, and he becomes the fixed object of concern for two women in love with the same imprisoned man. Oppenheim wrote in the last year of the war, when the Zeppelin was the airborne terror of every coastal town, and the novel keeps that fear on every page.

Why readers still come back to it

• A spy story that never leaves the drawing room’s atmosphere of suspicion.
• The Zeppelin menace rendered as lived daily fear, not scenery.
• Loyalties so uncertain the reader can never settle the stranger’s side.

About this DodaBooks edition

Set for long, suspenseful sittings: clean typography, a reliable linked table of contents, and chapter structure that suits the steady build of the fear. The stranger in the file can be met the instant your confirmation arrives.