Customer Reviews

The prisoner in the mask

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It's so sad that Dennis Wheatley has been ignored the last 25 years. Yes, some of his books have some very un-PC moments and characterizations in them--though, like all literature, they are products of their time. In this, "The Prisoner in the Mask," Wheatley introduces us to the Duc de Richilieu, the hero of ten more books to come. The duke is only eighteen at the start here, and the novel follows him on a dizzying series of adventures in the politically turbulent France of the 1890's. The duke manages to get himself into a scrape worthy of Alexandre Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo. The duke falls in love with the beautiful Angela, who moves from the character of a stock ingenue to an intelligent, strong, resourceful woman worthy of any feminist reading. The book only touches on the "magic" that the duke will later get involved in, but the reader doesn't miss it one bit. The adventure is so engrossing, the characters so much fun, and the settings so historically rich and lush, that the novel never loses steam. My one quibble is that some of the background on the political climate of France could have been introduced in dialogue and story, rather than the occasional multi-page essay Wheatley shoehorns into the story. Otherwise, I consider this novel a forgotten classic. If you can scare up a copy, do so. If you are new to Wheatley, you are in for a treat. A huge success and popular novelist in his day, Wheatley has what many contemporary popular novelists do not: along with page-turning suspense, he utilizes good, strong writing and characterization.