JOHN STRANG

John Strang is an aviation inventor.

A man still in his mid-to-late 20s when we meet him in 1916 [and the same for our encounter in 1942 - I will explain in a moment], John Strang had for a couple of years served with exceptional distinction in the British Air Corps [British Royal Air Force]. Prior to that he had been earnestly and diligently working with his partner and best friend, Dick Balvil[le] in the creation of a revolutionary new aircraft design. Then the War came and while both wanted to serve their country, the desire to finish the creation of this new flying machine which would practically have the ability to stop and hover in place was too intense and vital to abandon. They flipped a coin, the result of which was Strang signing up. 

"To the public John Strang was little known save as a young aeronautical engineer who, before the war, had carried out a few hazardous experiments in flight. But to a limited circle of experts he was something more than an airman. For a very brief period he had held a commission in the [Royal Naval Air Service/Royal Air Force] and then, unaccountably enough to some people, he had quietly left his squadron and returned to civil life. Only in the Air Ministry was it know that they had pressed him to accept promotion to wing-commander while he was seconded to special service. He had refused in order that he might carry on his work in his own way free from fear of official restraints."

That work was to find out why his friend had plunged thousands of feet to his death; to learn who had sabotaged the experimental plane and who was working non-stop in the shadows to get their hands on the plans.

Which is how Strang would come into close working arrangements with the Special Branch as that organization put considerable effort into tracking down the aviation spies that they had learned Germany [Kaiser directed or Nazi oriented, as it were] had dispatched to the shores of Britain. What Strang would help that intelligence organization learn was that the cell was not only determined, they were impressively skillful and devastatingly brutal.

When is a two-book series not a series? When it is the same book. But then again, it is sort of a series, or at least listed in a couple of places that mention Strang and his fight against spies of the Kaiser and later against spies of the Third Reich.

With 26 years separating the two adventures, I was mighty curious as to their nature. I had quite some time ago gotten hands on a public-domain copy of the first adventure and bided my time until a cost-enabled purchase of the later book came round. 

When that copy arrived, I eagerly opened it to see how an older Strang would be lured back into the spy game - or had he never left? Questions to be answered...

And that is when I found that the second book in the series was, except for some interesting amendments, the first book in the now non-series. 

It is not unheard of, naturally, for writers to edit their works before reprinting. In this case, the revisions brought the adventure from being a World War I fight against Kaiser spies to being a World War II fight against Nazi spies.

Most of the characters are the same though some have had interesting changes other than occasional name-swapping. And the basic aspects of the two versions remain the same, such that it is the same book. Hence, it is not really a series at all and does not have a place in this compendium.

And yet because of the subtle differences in printed blurb synopses that exist, rare as they are, and the fact that the titles are different, and the fact that the Enemy is different-ish, and the fact that there is a 26 year gap between them ... well, for completeness sake, the non-series John Strang series is here.