The Scarlet Pimpernel

Paris burns. The guillotine falls daily. While the rest of Europe watches in frozen horror and does nothing, one Englishman risks everything to pull aristocrats from the shadow of the blade. He moves through revolutionary France in disguise, his true identity hidden beneath the careful mask of a worthless fop. Sir Percy Blakeney seems to care only for fashion and trivial conversation. But behind closed doors, he becomes the Scarlet Pimpernel, a cunning fighter and master of escape whose simple flower symbol strikes terror into the bloodthirsty agents of the Committee of Public Safety. Baroness Orczy invented the secret identity trope a century before Batman or Superman. The Scarlet Pimpernel is the archetype from which every masked avenger descends: the double life, the hidden courage, the flower that marks the difference between death and salvation. This is historical adventure at its most pulpy and exhilarating, with ruses, narrow escapes, and the constant tension between Percy's public foolishness and his secret heroism.