The Flying Death

1908. American author, Adams was a reporter for the New York Sun, who at the urging of his friend Ray Stannard Baker, joined McClure's Magazine, where he gained a reputation as a muckraker for his articles on the conditions of public health in the United States. Adams also wrote a series of articles for Collier's Weekly, in which he exposed patent medicines; these pieces were credited with influencing the passage of the first Pure Food and Drugs Act. A prolific writer, Adams produced both fiction and nonfiction. His best-known novel, Revelry, was based on the scandals of the Harding administration. The Flying Death begins: Stanley Richard Colton, M.D., heaved his powerful form to and fro in his bed and cursed the day he had come to Montauk Point, which chanced to be the day just ended. All the world had been open to him, and his father's yacht to bear him to whatsoever corner thereof he might elect, in search of that which, once forfeited, no mere millions may buy back, the knack of peaceful sleep. But his wise old family physician had prescribed the tip-end of Long Island.