The unknown seven : A detective story by Herman Landon
"The unknown seven" by Herman Landon is a detective novel written in the early 20th century. The story centers on criminologist Kingdon Cole, who investigates the disappearance of Malcolm Reeves and is drawn into a labyrinth involving the enigmatic Professor Carmody and a masked syndicate operating from a secret lair atop a skyscraper. It promises high-stakes intrigue, psychological peril, and a duel of wits against a powerful, shadowy cabal. The opening of
the novel finds Kingdon Cole staking out Professor Carmody’s window on a foggy night when a mysterious woman in a limousine lures him to a hidden suite on the sealed top floor of a financial-district skyscraper. There a masked council of seven tries to buy him off the Reeves case; when he refuses, they stage a terrifying scene: Cole is shown the now-deranged Reeves and is threatened with a brain operation meant to reduce him to the same state, even urged to kill Reeves to bind his silence. Cole outmaneuvers a disguised “surgeon,” escapes his bonds with a stolen knife, and is then told—implausibly but insistently—that the seven are not his enemies and that the real surgical culprit may be a certain Dr. Dickson Latham. They press Cole to investigate Latham, and he grudgingly agrees. At the start of the next day’s inquiry, Cole visits Latham under an alias, finding a genial, reassuring specialist who shows no obvious sign of guilt, just as Cole is poised to test him by bringing up Reeves. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Landon, Herman, 1882-1960 |
|---|---|
| LoC No. | 23011449 |
| Title | The unknown seven : A detective story |
| Original Publication | New York: Chelsea House, 1923. |
| Credits | Tim Miller, Robert Tonsing, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction |
| Subject | Detective and mystery stories |
| Subject | Private investigators -- Fiction |
| Subject | Secret societies -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78010 |
| Release Date | Feb 22, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 4297 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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