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. It follows criminologist Kingdon Cole, whose search for the missing Malcolm Reeves entangles him with the secretive Professor Carmody, a seductive go-between, and a masked council of seven operating from a hidden floor of a skyscraper. The tale promises high-stakes urban intrigue, psychological menace, and a duel of wits between an independent sleuth and a shadowy
organization. At the start of the story, Kingdon Cole stakes out Carmody’s window on a foggy night when a woman in a limousine—who knows both his name and his case—whisks him, blindfolded, to a lavish but concealed top-floor suite served by a private elevator. There she urges him to drop the case; soon after, seven masked men try first to buy him off and then to break him, threatening a brain operation that would leave him insane “like Reeves.” In darkness Cole is overpowered, warned by the woman, and then confronted with the shattered Malcolm Reeves, who can only mutter “Yellow. Pretty yellow!” and recoils at the mention of Carmody. During a staged “operation,” Cole snatches a knife and, holding it in his teeth, forces the bearded surgeon to free him; the seven then abruptly claim they did not ruin Reeves and insist the real culprit is a cerebral specialist named Dr. Dickson Latham. Cole agrees to probe this new lead and, posing as a patient the next day, finds Latham an affable, capable doctor who resembles the disguised “surgeon,” leaving the investigation poised on a tantalizing new angle. (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 | 4798 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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