The Master Mystery

The Master Mystery

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The Master Mystery by John W. Grey, Arthur B. Reeve

Published:

1919

Pages:

0

Downloads:

1,850

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The Master Mystery

By

2
(1 Review)

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The is not a good book. In fact, it is a bad book.

In fact, the way to enjoy reading this is not as to read it as a book but to regard it as an interesting relic of the American silent film. This is a novelization of a film serial starring Harry Houdini. The serial was released at leat twice, once under the original name and once as "The Houdini Serial". It has all of the elements one would expect of a silent screen serial. Numerous chapters, each ending with either the hero or the heroine facing apparantly inescapable doom. The plot is drawn from the then current concerns of the newspapers: the original target of the villain is a corporation which buys patents from inventors, not with the intention of producing and marketing the invention, but to keep it off the market. The "Master" of the title is aparently an automaton with artificial intelligence. The hero, not surprisingly in Reeve novel is an intrepid scientist; not surprisingly for a Houdini movie, he is also an escape artist.

After reading this book, one could almost reproduce the original script, by putting a diagram to the left of each descriptive paragraph and "Story board" above each (rare) line of dialogue.