The Mystery of Mortimore Strange

The first chapter will have you at the edge of your seat from the very beginning as Mortimore Strange, out to give notice of amounts due on a sum owed to his employer, is unexpectedly paid the entire sum in cash. For several hours he succumbs to temptation and plans to run away and make his fortune by “borrowing” the sum and returning it before the note is due. But a glimpse of his unconscious fiancée halts him in the moment of making his escape, and he comes to himself with a rush of remorse. However, before he can reach his employers' offices, he is battered, robbed, and left for dead on the streets of London.

When he wakes in the hospital, he is greeted by the name of the fellow who previously owned his borrowed jacket; nothing else was left on him to show his identity. He has been battered beyond recognition; his nose broken, his leg and shoulder injured beyond repair. When he reads the papers, all of London is ringing with the tale of his theft and disappearance; if someone had not identified his “body” from a man's fished from a call, he would be a wanted man even then. Penniless, jobless, and with his very identity gone, Mortimore manages to make it to the New World, wearing the name of the unknown person whose coat he wears: David Bewsher.

Nine years later, once he has gained his fortune and made full restitution to his former employers, the millionaire David Bewsher returns to London to clear his name, find his child-sister, and discover who it was who took advantage of his moment of weakness and tried to murder him. This is the story of his hunt for vengeance and the surprising facts he discovers along the way.

Well, usually I'm not one to enjoy heroes who are up a creek from a moment of weakness, however remorseful. Yet, while I didn't like reading of his theft, the great losses he suffers because of it make a man of him. And what he discovers in this journey of finding the men who thirsted for his very life make him redefine his own motives in wanting vengeance. Mortimore is a complex character and the mystery is interesting.

Only one spot was a trouble to me: a few words at the beginning of the chapter where we meet Meynell, Lydia, and Grace Warner and Stella Strange would easily have sufficed to tell that the scene is nine years after the previous chapter. As it was, I spent several chapters in confusion until I figured it out on my own. I'd have liked to have been told!