Audiobook · read by volunteers
Won by Crime
A. Frank Pinkerton
Read by Sibella Denton · 10 chapters · 1 h 21
About the book
Won by Crime is an unrelated novella that was first printed alongside a detective novel, and it takes the reader far from the railways of America to a wild island in the Portuguese empire. Don Garcia, the Viceroy of Goa, brings his daughter and his nephew to this remote place, and adventure and melodrama quickly follow. The tale is packed with secrets, danger and strong emotions, in the best tradition of Victorian sensational fiction, and it moves at a brisk pace through ten short chapters. Read by Sibella Denton, the whole recording lasts about an hour and a half. It is a brief, colourful and slightly old-fashioned escape, perfect for a single sitting and for anyone who enjoys a story where passions run high and nothing is quite as it first appears.
Introduction
Won by Crime was published in 1886 under the name A. Frank Pinkerton, the same name that appears on the detective novel Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective. In the original edition of that book, this novella was included as a bonus, even though the two have nothing to do with each other. Little is known for certain about the person behind the name.
The setting is quite different from the American railroads of the other story. Here the action takes place on an island, and the central figure is Don Garcia, the Portuguese Viceroy to Goa, who brings his daughter and his nephew with him. From that starting point the story develops into the sort of tale that late nineteenth-century readers liked: a romantic adventure with high stakes, strong feelings and a good deal of melodrama. Such stories often reflect the colonial imagination of the period, and the attitudes they express may strike modern listeners as dated.
The recording is by LibriVox volunteer Sibella Denton, who also read the companion novel. It lasts about an hour and twenty-five minutes and is divided into ten files, with each chapter split into two parts. The short running time makes it easy to enjoy in a single evening.
For readers of Victorian popular fiction, the novella is a curiosity, a second story that was bound into the same cheap edition as a detective novel, and a short, colourful one with plenty of incident. For everyone else, it is a compact and colourful adventure that moves quickly and does not ask for much more than a willingness to be swept along.
Public domain
A. Frank Pinkerton died in 1887: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text