This premium-quality volume includes the complete text of Arthur Applin's little-known vintage mystery tale in a freshly edited and newly typeset edition. With a generous 6"x9" page size, this Summit Classic Press edition is printed on heavyweight bright white paper with a fully laminated cover featuring an original full color design. Prepared by human editors, this is NOT a machine-scanned or reproduction version. Also included is a bibliography of the hard-to-find works of Arthur Applin. Blackthorn Farm... The crumbling ancestral home of the Dale family, Blackthorn Farm verges on the moors of Devonshire and consists of poor farmland, an abandoned tin mine, and a few cows. Already burdened by a substantial mortgage, what threatens to be the crushing blow to old John Dale comes in the form of a scandal of forgery, fraud and theft involving his only son, Rupert, throwing the future of his land and of his lovely daughter Marjorie into doubt. But Blackthorn Farm hides a secret that lays at the root of the trouble, as circumstances conspire to make Rupert the victim of a clever but cold-blooded scheme. With a plot that twists and turns in some surprising directions, this tale of love and friendship, betrayal and loyalty, deceit, greed, suspicion and trust follows the trail of young Rupert as he makes his way half-way around the world, only to end up and uncover the full truth right where the adventure began... at Blackthorn Farm. An interesting departure from the usual fare found in the "mystery" genre, this story is neither a traditional ("whodunit?") or an inverted ("howcatchem?") mystery, or perhaps more accurately it is a bit of both, for after the "who," and "how" are revealed there are still some surprises, and the plot is not quite so transparent as you may think early on. A well-known writer of the Edwardian Period, Arthur Applin (1873-1949) enjoyed considerable success writing mysteries and adventure tales, often with a romance as a major sub-plot. Most of his works have become relatively obscure and hard to find, and he is probably best-known today for his ill-fated short biography of British Admiral John Jellicoe, "Admiral Jellicoe" (1915), alternately titled "Life of Admiral Jellicoe." Ironically, the book was written just before the outbreak of WW I, as Jellicoe was beginning his tenure as Supreme Admiral of the Home Fleets, and published prior to the Battle of Jutland, the only major fleet action of Jellicoe's long career.