The Kidnapped President

Dick Helmsworth was a chief officer with a steady ship and a steady life until Captain Harveston destroyed both. Dismissed without cause, blacklisted by the shipping companies, Helmsworth finds himself adrift in more ways than one. Then Don Guzman de Silvestre walks into his life: a silver-tongued Spaniard with a ruined country and a audacious plan. He needs a man who knows the sea. He needs a man willing to kidnap a president. What begins as a desperate man's job becomes a twisting tale of revolution, betrayal, and the question of what any of us would do when the world offers us a second chance at power. Guy Boothby was the king of the popular adventure romance in Edwardian England, and this 1902 novel shows exactly why. It's pulp plotting dressed in silk prose, a rattling good yarn about imperialism's shadow side. The book is very much of its era, with all the colonial attitudes that implies, but it's also genuinely thrilling, with a protagonist who isn't a hero so much as a man making the best of a bad situation. If you want adventure with a side of political cynicism, this is exactly your speed.