Best 1909 Adventures (4)
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March 5, 2019
One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1909 adventure novels. Happy 110th anniversary!
George Barr McCutcheon’s Graustarkian adventure Truxton King.
In the third Graustark novel (a sentimental favorite of mine, because I read it when I was an adolescent, one summer in Maine), Queen Yetive and her dashing American husband, Grenfall Lorry — the protagonists of the first installment in the series, Graustark: The Story of a Love Behind a Throne (1901) — have been killed in an accident! Their seven-year-old son, Prince Robin, a beloved figure, is now ruler of the fictional Eastern European principality. Alas, the Party of Equals — anarchists — are plotting a suicide-bombing assassination of the young prince. Enter another dashing American: “This tall young man in the panama hat and grey flannels was Truxton King, embryo globe-trotter and searcher after the treasures of Romance.” Truxton takes Prince Robin under his wing; is this where Hergé got the Tintin/Abdullah sub-plot of Land of Black Gold and The Red Sea Sharks? Truxton has three love interests, the first of whom is Olga, daughter of a famous Polish anarchist: She hates the Graustarkian nobility because they wouldn’t allow her to marry a prince with whom she’d been in love. Is she involved in the assassination plot? The second is a beautiful young Graustarkian countess, unhappy bride of Marlanx, an exiled Graustarkian royal who has designs on the throne, and who may secretly have something to do with the anarchists! The third is Loraine, sister of the prince’s mentor, John Tullis — an equally dashing, if older American. Can King and Tullis foil the anarchists’ plot — and defend the royal palace against Marlanx’s all-out attack?
Fun facts: Adapted by Jerome Storm as a 1923 movie starring John Gilbert, Ruth Clifford, and a young Michael D. Moore — who’d grow up to be assistant/second unit director on dozens of films, from The Ten Commandments and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Raiders of the Lost Ark.
JOSH GLENN’S *BEST ADVENTURES* LISTS: BEST 250 ADVENTURES OF THE 20TH CENTURY | 100 BEST OUGHTS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST RADIUM AGE (PROTO-)SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TEENS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TWENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST THIRTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST GOLDEN AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FORTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FIFTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SIXTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST NEW WAVE SCI FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SEVENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST EIGHTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST DIAMOND AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST NINETIES ADVENTURES (in progress) | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | NOTES ON 21st-CENTURY ADVENTURES.