E. Phillips Oppenheim Books In Order

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E. Phillips Oppenheim is a British mystery, thriller and romance author from London who is best known for “The Great Impersonation” a watershed novel in the thriller genre. Oppenheimer was born in London in 1866 to a leather merchant named Edward Oppenheimer and his wife Henrietta Budd Oppenheimer. He went to the Wyggeston Grammar School in Leicester and spent a lot of time helping out in his father’s leather business as a child. He would quit school as a sixteen-year-old and spent more than two decades running the business alongside his father. Upon the death of his father, Philips began to concentrate more on his writing than on the business. He wrote his first novel in 1887 titled “Expiation” that went on to become a critically acclaimed title. The success of the first novel was a great confidence booster as he published several other successful works including “Monk of Cruta” in 1894, “Mysterious Mr. Sabin” in 1898 and “The Illustrious Prince” in 1910 among many others. While he penned some of his earlier novels under Anthony Partridge his pseudonym, he became better known in his real name for writing many popular novels and short stories that he sometimes illustrated. His novels are known to include intrigue, international espionage and everyday parables. You get everything from high born men in their charming Rogue tradition, spies that are up to the challenge and sophisticated gastronomes as heroes.

Since he started out as a businessman, Oppenheimer traveled a lot on the content and in England, In fact, it was in the United States that he met Elsie Clara Hopkins that would become his wife. The two made their home in Leicester and had one child from the marriage despite many allegations of infidelity about Oppenheimer. In 1905, the family moved to the more rural Norfolk country to the small town of Sheringham. Country life agreed with Oppenheimer as it ushered in a period of prolific writing in which he wrote more than seventy titles having already written thirty prior to the move. When World War I broke out in 1914, he was offered a job in the Ministry of Information. He was to travel to the front alongside journalists to chronicle the war. While he came back to Norfolk after the war, the memories of Cote d’Azur had left an indelible mark on the author. Since he was making so much in book sales he decided to move to France. Selling his home in Norfolk, he moved the family to Cagnes-sur-Mer, a small town between Nice and Cannes. In France, he continued penning novels and short stories that he would then sell to US magazine publishers prior to releasing them in bookstores. His extraordinary success saw him featured on the 1927 September 12 issue of TIME magazine. He also spent a lot of time gambling, playing golf and sailing Echo I which had become one of his favorite activities.

To avoid the high death taxes in France, he decided to sell his house in 1934 and moved to Le Vauquiedor in the Channel Islands. Philips then spent much of his time between the Channel Islands and the French Riviera. In 1938, he decided that he had enough money for another home on the Riviera in the small town of Grasse. When France fell to the Nazis, they were trapped for a time but eventually managed to escape to Portugal and Spain before they made their way back to England in 1941. By 1945, Oppenheimer was ailing though he managed to go back to the Channel Islands and reclaim his house despite the many complications. He was still writing and during this time his most notable work was “Extraordinary,” that was published in 1937 and an autobiography in 1941 titled “The Pool of Memory.” After several years of struggling with a prostate condition, he died in 1946 in the Channel Islands.

E Phillips Oppenheim debut novel “Expiation” opens to a remote scene in the Canadian wilderness. Two men have been exiled from their society and are now living in a cabin. One had stumbled upon a newspaper that says that they could return home since there was evidence to exonerate them. They had run away when they had been accused of killing a man who it has been established was murdered by another. The man who finds the paper wastes no time as he leaves in the night to go back home. In England, Godfrey and Eva who are the twin children of Harold Mornington have been under the care of their relatives right from the time they were six months old when their last remaining parent fled town. Their father is now back home after two decades in exile. How will they accept the father they never knew and how will he relate to them? The novel comes with a lot of plot twists, crime, unscrupulous behavior, longing, love and a lot of characters that make for a great introduction to the themes of the author’s collections and novels.

“A Monk of Cruta” is a great novel by Oppenheimer that is somewhat different from his later works given its tragic plot and significantly darker themes. The novel is classified as a sensation/gothic novel with its fire and brimstone, sinister monks, storms and a seductive private dancer. The novel tells the story of a rich Briton that fell in love with the daughter of a high born Italian from the Island of Cruta in the Mediterranean. The very dark influence of the Catholic Church and their child come together and conspire to defeat both happiness and love. The novel is set in Regency salons in England, where the very best of culture is showcased, particularly through the interactions between the lead Andrea and a sexy dancer.

“A Daughter of the Marionis” by E Phillips Oppenheim introduces a wealthy and carefree lord St. Maurice of Palermo. He thinks he needs nothing in his life until he sees Adrienne Cartuccio an Italian singer one evening with whom he instantly falls in love and plans to meet and seduce. He is going to face some major competition given that Count Leonardo di Marioni her cousin has loved her and wanted her for years though she has always rejected him. Marioni has put in place a plan to kidnap her as he believes that with time she will come to love him. St. Maurice learns of the plot and foils it and now the Count wants to resolve the dispute with the young Englishman in a duel. Unwilling to lose the man she loves Andrienne reports Marioni to the authorities and gets him arrested and thrown in prison. Twenty-five years later Marioni is released from prison and is back looking for revenge.

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