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The Enterprising Burglar
A Robin Hood-style gentleman burglar attempts to foil a revolutionary conspiracy in post-World-War-I England.
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Published July 5, 2026
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July 13, 2026
Yes, the title is a quotation from Gilbert and Sullivan.
Returned from World War I, and both bored and also outraged at the plight of returned soldiers who starve while war profiteers revel in their wealth, the Enterprising Burglar embarks on a Robin Hood campaign, stealing from the profiteers and giving the money to support... anti-Bolshevik causes? Yes, rather than thinking "The problem here is that capital has too much power and labour too little, I will attempt to shift the balance" or "I'll help support my former comrades who now can't get jobs," he takes on a revolutionary conspiracy that he comes across, the aim of which is to install a dictator in Britain after overthrowing the government. Said dictator candidate is inspirational, plausible, charismatic. His followers, rather than being just working-class Reds, are honest Englishmen of all classes and backgrounds. The Burglar - professionally known as Vive le Sport, legal name Stephen Nicholson, Nick to his friends - wants to foil the uprising while not, if he can help it, landing anyone in trouble other than the Chief, whose identity he is trying to ascertain. Because the other conspirators are just decent fellows who've been misled.
He confides in his old friend Jack and Jack's twin sister Jill (yes, really). Jack is a Scotland Yard detective, who has to pretend he doesn't know about Vive le Sport's activities because, don't you know, they're old friends, what? Knew each other in the trenches, and all that sort of thing. But Jack is being sent by his idiot superiors, who don't believe in the conspiracy, to Russia, so he can't be of much initial help.
Nick has been to a meeting of the conspirators in Wales (he's a master of disguise and has penetrated the organisation relatively easily), and is returning by train to London, in the same compartment as the leader of the conspiracy for the Western area, a Welshman. He's just hoping for some lucky chance that will enable him to go more deeply into the conspiracy and maybe get a clue to the Chief's identity when the author generously provides a train crash, in which the Welshman is badly injured, allowing Nick to impersonate him (swathed in bandages) at the big meeting. There, he gets away with the McGuffin: a signed list of all the members, which was going to be sent to Russia as the only collateral for a loan to fund the revolution. He then tries to use it as leverage to get the Chief to cancel the revolt and stand everyone down. He gives him until a month before the scheduled day.
Of course, the Chief isn't having that, and launches a series of attempts to get the McGuffin back. In the course of these, by the usual credulity-stretching coincidences that were so common in fiction of this period, the same people keep encountering each other in different contexts, and we end up with a love interest for Nick (I thought it was going to be Jill, but no; there are actually three named female characters with lines in this book, and I think they may even pass the Bechdel test.)
Round and round and round we go, and in the end the Chief's identity is revealed , and everything resolves itself. Meanwhile, though, we've had action, disguises, bluffs, danger, romance... all the ingredients.
It's not a bad book for its time. Yes, the coincidences are piled on far too thickly, but that could be said of many books written in this period. The love interest is appealing and shows at least some independence, though she doesn't really contribute all that much to the main plot. The schemes are sometimes clever, and if the conspiracy is thoroughly implausible, at least it's not as anti-labour as it could easily have been, and as better writers than this (looking at you, Agatha Christie) made it when employing this particular early-20th-century bogeyman. It's an earnest effort that's just a little too shonky to get four stars from me.
Returned from World War I, and both bored and also outraged at the plight of returned soldiers who starve while war profiteers revel in their wealth, the Enterprising Burglar embarks on a Robin Hood campaign, stealing from the profiteers and giving the money to support... anti-Bolshevik causes? Yes, rather than thinking "The problem here is that capital has too much power and labour too little, I will attempt to shift the balance" or "I'll help support my former comrades who now can't get jobs," he takes on a revolutionary conspiracy that he comes across, the aim of which is to install a dictator in Britain after overthrowing the government. Said dictator candidate is inspirational, plausible, charismatic. His followers, rather than being just working-class Reds, are honest Englishmen of all classes and backgrounds. The Burglar - professionally known as Vive le Sport, legal name Stephen Nicholson, Nick to his friends - wants to foil the uprising while not, if he can help it, landing anyone in trouble other than the Chief, whose identity he is trying to ascertain. Because the other conspirators are just decent fellows who've been misled.
He confides in his old friend Jack and Jack's twin sister Jill (yes, really). Jack is a Scotland Yard detective, who has to pretend he doesn't know about Vive le Sport's activities because, don't you know, they're old friends, what? Knew each other in the trenches, and all that sort of thing. But Jack is being sent by his idiot superiors, who don't believe in the conspiracy, to Russia, so he can't be of much initial help.
Nick has been to a meeting of the conspirators in Wales (he's a master of disguise and has penetrated the organisation relatively easily), and is returning by train to London, in the same compartment as the leader of the conspiracy for the Western area, a Welshman. He's just hoping for some lucky chance that will enable him to go more deeply into the conspiracy and maybe get a clue to the Chief's identity when the author generously provides a train crash, in which the Welshman is badly injured, allowing Nick to impersonate him (swathed in bandages) at the big meeting. There, he gets away with the McGuffin: a signed list of all the members, which was going to be sent to Russia as the only collateral for a loan to fund the revolution. He then tries to use it as leverage to get the Chief to cancel the revolt and stand everyone down. He gives him until a month before the scheduled day.
Of course, the Chief isn't having that, and launches a series of attempts to get the McGuffin back. In the course of these, by the usual credulity-stretching coincidences that were so common in fiction of this period, the same people keep encountering each other in different contexts, and we end up with a love interest for Nick (I thought it was going to be Jill, but no; there are actually three named female characters with lines in this book, and I think they may even pass the Bechdel test.)
Round and round and round we go, and in the end the Chief's identity is revealed , and everything resolves itself. Meanwhile, though, we've had action, disguises, bluffs, danger, romance... all the ingredients.
It's not a bad book for its time. Yes, the coincidences are piled on far too thickly, but that could be said of many books written in this period. The love interest is appealing and shows at least some independence, though she doesn't really contribute all that much to the main plot. The schemes are sometimes clever, and if the conspiracy is thoroughly implausible, at least it's not as anti-labour as it could easily have been, and as better writers than this (looking at you, Agatha Christie) made it when employing this particular early-20th-century bogeyman. It's an earnest effort that's just a little too shonky to get four stars from me.
Displaying 1 of 1 review