The Place of Dragons: A Mystery

"The Place of Dragons: A Mystery" by William Le Queux is a detective novel written in the early 20th century. The story revolves around Herbert Vidal, an investigator of crime, who is drawn into a puzzling case involving the mysterious death of a wealthy old man named Vernon Gregory. The narrative unfolds in the seaside town of Cromer, where Vidal becomes intertwined with a series of eccentric characters and peculiar events that suggest deeper, hidden motives behind Gregory's passing and the reappearance of his nephew. The opening of the novel introduces Vidal and Major Keppell, who discuss the curious circumstances of Gregory's habitual morning walks and his sudden death, found early in the morning by a coast-guard. As Vidal investigates further, he discovers that Gregory might not even be who he claimed, leading to a complexity of identities involving his nephew, Edward Craig. These initial chapters not only establish an intriguing setting but also pose numerous questions about the relationships between these characters, hinting at deception and a web of secrets yet to be unraveled. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

William Tufnell Le Queux was an Anglo-French journalist and writer. He was also a diplomat, a traveller, a flying buff who officiated at the first British air meeting at Doncaster in 1909, and a wireless pioneer who broadcast music from his own station long before radio was generally available; his claims regarding his own abilities and exploits, however, were usually exaggerated. His best-known works are the anti-French and anti-Russian invasion fantasy The Great War in England in 1897 (1894) and the anti-German invasion fantasy The Invasion of 1910 (1906), the latter becoming a bestseller.