100th

THE MAGNIFICENT HOAX--E. Phillips Oppenheim--Little, Brown ($2). Last week E. Phillips Oppenheim published his 100th novel. This year rounds out a half-century of writing. Next October he will be 70. "E. Phillips Oppenheim" is more than a man's name: it has become a familiar phrase for bejewelled melodrama. In the 50 years Author Oppenheim has been doing business his trademarked product has become as well known and as popular as a successful breakfast food, and for the same reasons : it is a standard brand and it pleases the public palate. To analyze an Oppenheim book would be as uninformative a process as to announce that a breakfast food was compounded simply of bran, malt, sugar and salt. The important thing is what it tastes like.

Oppenheim books taste of aristocratic beauties, international spies, missing jewels, noblemen in disguise, lurking assassins. They have a spice, but just a spice, of sex. And through them all trickles, a rich essence of good food and drink. The latest Oppenheim is no exception to the Oppenheim rule. Reduced to its crude elements of malt, sugar and salt, it might seem a lifeless and unlikely concoction. But to Oppenheim addicts it is a thoroughly lively and likely affair.

Why was Lady Judith Martellon living in a tenement house and patronizing the bar of the Green Man? Why was Ordino's exclusive club so popular? What was Ordino's connection with Lady Judith and Professor Sir Gregory Fawsitt? Who was the man in the long, soiled mackintosh, the man with the deep-set evil eyes and the complexion of a vampire? To some of these questions the reader can soon supply the answer. Ordino's club was a blind for selling drugs. Ordino was in cahoots with Lady Judith and Sir Gregory, whose yacht-cruises were not innocent pleasure trips but drug-buying expeditions to the Orient. This nefarious trade paid the three partners so well that they were thinking of retiring after a few more hauls. Then Scotland Yard began to close in on them. But the criminals might have escaped the Law had not that evil-eyed individual in a mackintosh taken a blasphemous fancy to Lady Judith. She, not being the tart he took her for, recoiled in disgust. At that he went and ratted to the police. It looked like an open-&-shut case against Sir Gregory and his pals, especially when he pleaded guilty to the charge of drug-smuggling. At the crucial moment, however, he showed that he was not a professor for nothing. Sensation in court; defendants dismissed with thanks. Oppenheimers will chuckle at this denouement ; non-Oppenheimers may slam the book shut, muttering that The Magnificent Hoax is well and truly named.

The Author would appreciate the chuckle, would not mind the mutter. To Edward Phillips Oppenheim, a novel is only a form of entertainment. And that his novels are a very successful form of entertainment he well knows. They even entertain him. For Author Oppenheim, unlike most of his fellow-writers, really enjoys writing. A provincial who has never lost his enthusiastic curiosity about high life but prefers making up his own romantic answers rather than ferreting out the drab or difficult truth, Author Oppenheim gets many a suggestive hint from his well-spent hours in cafe or casino. And a hint is enough to start him off. He never plots his books, never knows how they will turn out. Says he: "I'm just a yarn-spinner, I'm not what you fellows call a literary man."

Born in London, educated in Leicester, Oppenheim was brought up to succeed his father in the family leather business. But he liked writing stories better than business letters, and as soon as he discovered that other people liked his stories too. he set up for himself as a budding author. Blooming at a great rate ever since, he shows no signs of fading. The Magnificent Hoax is his 100th novel; his 100th book (Miss Brown of N. Y. O.) was published in 1927. Thirty-three short-story collections, three omnibus volumes, one travel book bring his total to 137. His nearest competitor, Alexandre Dumas (who probably signed many a book he did not actually write"), published about 5,900,000 words. Oppenheim, with only the help of a pseudonym* and a secretary, has turned out over ten million.

In 1892 Oppenheim married one Elsie Hopkins, of Chelsea, Mass. The story is that her father, skeptical of his prospects, had frowned on his suit; that when Oppenheim got his first big check from a publisher he caught the next boat to the U. S., appeared on the Hopkins doorstep one morning before breakfast. With increasing income came increasing income taxes, and in 1925 the Oppenheims moved to the Riviera to escape them. There for ten years prosperous, stocky Author Oppenheim was a well-known figure in the cafes, on the golf links, at Monte Carlo's Casino. Two years ago falling exchange rates drove him to the Channel island of Guernsey, where he now lives with his wife, still dictates a thrilling installment daily to his admiring secretary.

Though Oppenheim addicts can be counted on to gobble up everything this fiction-factory produces, some products have sold better than others. Old-timers still remember his first big success, A Prince of Sinners (1903). Best-known Oppenheim: The Great Impersonation (1920).

*Five Oppenheim novels have appeared under the pseudonym "Anthony Partridge."

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