A baronet in debt, a secretary with ferret eyes, and a young man convicted of a crime his family knows he did not commit. Le Queux wrote over a hundred and fifty thrillers and had a genuine ear for the way blackmail is actually conducted — by hints, in comfortable rooms. The appeal chapters turn on a piece of evidence that everyone concerned would rather not produce. Fifty-nine plates of painting, including works by William Quiller Orchardson and John Atkinson Grimshaw, range from 1829 to 1915 and dwell on the quiet English interiors, coastal towns and low-tide harbours where Le Queux's blackmailers do their work.
