1950s, Mysterious Mr. Sabin, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Ward, Lock and Co, London and Melbourne

Mysterious Mr. Sabin is a 1898 spy thriller novel by the British writer E. Phillips Oppenheim. It was the first spy novel by Oppenheim, a genre which he came to dominate during the First World War and interwar era. Revolving around a plot of a Frenchman selling British military secrets it became a bestseller, establishing him as a popular writer. It has been described as the novel “that launched Oppenheim’s career of xenophobic espionage fantasy”. It contains elements of invasion fiction, a common genre theme at the time.