The Air Pirate

Writing in 1919, popular author Guy Thorne looks into the future, to the 1930s when massive seaplanes will be flying around the world, and small private aircraft are everywhere. Without warning, a high speed seaplane attacks two of these huge transatlantic flying boats and kidnaps the fiancée of the young British Chief of the Air Police, the Scotland Yard of the air. The Chief, Sir John Custance, sets out to track down and destroy the Air Pirates, and recover his fiancée, Constance Shepherd, Connie, a popular singer on the London stage. With expert assistance from a Japanese bodyguard, the trail leads the Chief to the lonely Lands End peninsular of South West England. Quoting a press report from the book, we read: "Sir John, though barely thirty years of age, is an official in every way worthy of his high position, an organizer of exceptional ability and a pilot of practical experience. Press and public are perfectly well aware that it is owing to his personal exertions that our magnificent transatlantic airliners are no longer stricken down by the Night Terror of the immediate past." The book has been lightly edited.