August 1914. Young Kenneth Amory works in Cologne for his father's German partner, but as war erupts between England and Germany, he finds himself trapped behind enemy lines. When he overhears a dangerous conspiracy to destroy a key Belgian bridge, Kenneth becomes a target. Arrested as a spy and facing execution, he must escape using nothing but his wits and courage. Teaming up with a mysterious stranger named Lewis Granger, Kenneth races to thwart the German plans and make it home alive. Written in the very year the war began, this is adventure fiction as Britain experienced it in real time: urgent, patriotic, and pulsing with the belief that British boys would answer the call. Herbert Strang captures the fever of those first weeks, when the old world cracked open and everything hung in the balance. The result is both a ripping escape story and a fascinating artifact of how a nation imagined its own heroism at the dawn of the twentieth century's great tragedy.
