Moon of Madness by Sax Rohmer

Classic intrigue and romance in the Mediterranean moonlight, written in 1927 by Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward), author of the famous thrillers starring master criminal Fu Manchu. Serialized in London and New York, the adventure ebbs and flows, never growing dull.

Young Nanette is vacationing with her family in Madeira. When a German liner arrives in port from Argentina, Nanette and her friends board to have a lager against her parents' wishes, where they find Major Edmond O'Shea, a man of power whom soldiers would follow into the thickest and hottest. He has been tracking one Señor Gabriel de Cunha, a darkly handsome gentleman in possession of a small dispatch box containing the compromising correspondence of a certain royal personage. Of course, de Cunha is enamored of Nanette, and they are all invited to his hilltop bungalow. Nanette at eighteen is not yet a woman of the world and does not yet know her de Cunhas—she is flattered but is actually smitten with O'Shea. He could be her first big love, but he is thirty-five, so it's quite impossible.

Nanette's friend, Mr. Decies, learns that de Cunha is a communist agent and works with O'Shea to retrieve the dispatch box and then the photographs of the contents. New friends who could be nefarious Red agents continue to attach themselves to their party. Scotland Yard warns them that the infamous Red immediate chief, Adolf Zara, is in their presence, traveling under an unknown name, yet no one knows what he looks like. Nanette shows her mettle once kidnapped and escapes unclothed into the sea. Returning to London, coded messages indicate the gathering of comrades, including Vice President Schmidt. There may be a chance to expose them all for the dangerously clever devils they are. Who will triumph at the final hour?

With her shapely head of bobbed hair, Nanette is a modern heroine for 1927, eager to prove herself in the fray, while athletic Mr. Decies goes so far as to impersonate a Red to explode their organization from within. This is the usual enjoyable bunk that never lags; breezy danger matched with romance. The flow is easy and does not read as serialized.

An entertaining amusement that you can read or download for free on several sites.

1927 / Hardcover / 260 pages