Tue 22 Dec 2020
An Archived Mystery Review by Doug Greene: GUY BOOTHBY – A Bid for Fortune.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[3] Comments
GUY BOOTHBY – A Bid for Fortune. Dr. Nikola #1. Appleton, hardcover, 1895. Published earlier in the UK by Ward Lock, hardcover, 1895. Reprinted as Enter Dr. Nikola. Newcastle, UK, paperback, 1975. Later reprinted by Oxford University Press, US, paperback, 1996; then many POD editions. Silent film: Unity-Super, 1917.
Searching for books is often a frustrating task, not merely because (as we all know) some books simply won’t be found but also because those that are located often turn out to be disappointments. In my experience, many highly touted classics have not lived up to their publicity. That is not the case, I’m glad to report, with Guy Boothby’s first novel about Dr. Nikola.
I leave it to others to discover whether Dr. Nikola is fiction’s first arch-criminal (is Moriarty in the same category?), but it seems likely that the Nikola books form the first sustained series featuring such a nefarious malefactor. A Bid for Fortune has coincidences galore and occasional purple prose (“Oh, my girlie! my poor little girlie! what have I brought you to through my. obstinacy?”), but it is generally well-told and well-plotted. Boothby keeps the reader interested not by overwhelming use of violence – indeed, I don’t recall a single murder in it – but by a sense of mystery.
The book opens with Dr. Nikola meeting 3 co-conspirators who plan, for an unnamed reason and by unspecified means, to ruin a man named Wetherell: “My toils are closing on you … you will find yourself being slowly but surely ground into powder. Then you may be sorry you thought fit to baulk Dr. Nikola.” The scene then shifts to Australia, to young Dick Hatteras who has made a fortune pearling and who plans to visit his ancestral home in England. He falls in love with Wetherell’s daughter, and on shipboard they pledge their troth (as they used to do; nowadays they just shack up).
Once in London, his fiancee is forced to 1eave him; he meets Dr. Nikola, and befriends a young nobleman whom he agrees to guide to Australia. The plot becomes steadily more complicated, as Nikola’s minions kidnap Hatteras and the young Lord in Cairo. Eventually, they return to Australia, and rescue all in distress, but Dr. Nikola obtains what he has sought from Wetherell. Nevertheless, the veil of mystery remains even in the final paragraph: “What gigantic coup [Nikola] intends to accomplish … is beyond my power to tell.”
Boothby, an Australian, had not only a sense of mystery but also a talent for description of 19th century England, Australia and Egypt. A Bid for Fortune is an excellent example of leisurely but engrossing fin de siecle storytelling.
The Dr. Nikola series —
A Bid for Fortune; or, Dr. Nikola’s Vendetta. Ward 1895.
Doctor Nikola. Ward 1896.
The Lust of Hate. Ward 1898.
Dr. Nikola’s Experiment. Hodder 1899.
Farewell Nikola. Ward 1901.
December 22nd, 2020 at 8:53 pm
Before the Yellow Peril took over there was the Italian Peril (THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE SEVEN KINGS) which even found its way into the Sherlock Holmes saga with an account of the Black Hand.
Like Fu Manchu, Nikola surpassed the ethnic fears ignorance and anxiety that bred him to become one of the great villains in popular literature thanks to Boothby’s gifts and energy as a writer.
The mastermind of crime predates Nikola and Moriarity by a bit. There is Balzac’s shady Vautrin, and though he is the books hero the Count of Monte Cristo behaves much like a criminal mastermind. I think both the Black Coats and John Devil by Feval predate Nikola, and of course to some extent there is Fagin in Dickens and the various enemies Rocambole and the heroes of Eugene Sue’s novels battle.
Then too there is Varney the Vampire, Matrurin, Brother Ambrose in THE MONK, and Spring-Heel Jack before he morphed into a kind of super hero.
Jules Verne’s Nemo is a prototype, and by the time he created Robur and wrote FOR THE FLAG and INTO THE NIGER BEND he was full blown into master criminals. FOR THE FLAG is very nearly a James Bond novel.
Hesketh Prichard’s Spanish bandit Don Q is around the same period of Nikola.
The trope of the criminal mastermind dates in fiction at least to Godwin’s CALEB WILLIAMS and in the popular Newgate Calendar and characters like Jack Wild, Dick Turpin, and the Picaroon who caught the imagination of the late 18th Century and carried over into the early Romantic and Gothic movement.
For that matter legend turned Prince John and the Sheriff of Notingham into pretty much master criminals looting Richard’s England while propaganda turned the Templars and later the Borgias into models of the form.
December 22nd, 2020 at 9:24 pm
I knew this review would be just your cup of tea, David. Thanks for the long detailed line of nasty mastermind criminals, including Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham, probably the most famous of them all, including Professor Moriarty.
December 24th, 2020 at 12:11 pm
I think the important thing about Dr Nikola is the size of his ambition as a criminal mastermind. His predecessors are mere monarchs of the underworld or would-be powers behind the throne, whereas Nikola is after the Complete Downfall of Civilisation and Absolute Control of the World and his successors, beginning with Fu Manchu, follow suit.