Doctor Syn on the High Seas by Russell Thorndyke


 This is a boy's-own-adventure. It was published in 1936, and offers everything that boy's-own-adventures from that period offer. Boys, and children in general, were not assumed to be stupid at that time. The vocabulary is much richer than one would find in books intended for young people in our time. 

The hero, Doctor Syn, is not any sort of role model. He's filled with hatred for the man for whom his wife, of her own free will, left him. The whole novel is about Syn, driven by his hatred, tracking that man. He has lots of adventures in the course of pursuing his vendetta, and they are satisfyingly adventurous. 

The things that boys'-own-adventures from the good old days offer include also things that are much less attractive. It is assumed, for example, that readers will chuckle along with, or even worse, learn from, the denigration of people of African descent. A black man captains a pirate ship. He and his crew kill, pillage, and rape—you know, pirate stuff—but the worst thing about him is that he's a black man in a position of authority over white people. Sigh. 

Thorndyke seems to have had some weird kind of respect, however, for the people he calls "redskins"—Doctor Syn makes it to the Americas—but somehow his patronizing "respect" for the natives is almost as off putting as his blatant prejudice against those who I'm surprised he didn't call "blackskins."

I read this book after hearing about the series of which it is a part somewhere. I will not be seeking out the further adventures of Doctor Syn.

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