The Great Impersonation is the high point in the literature of deception and conspiracy; of all the stories of international intrigue and espionage, no other is written with such consummate skill, and such a perfect blending of love, secret-enterprise, and malevolent cunning. Oppenheim is the great master of romances ingeniously woven into a colourful background of extra-political adventure, and The Great Impersonation is the best he has ever written.
The most celebrated of Oppenheim’s books, The Great Impersonation opens in East Africa in 1913, as the disgraced English aristocrat Everard Dominey stumbles out of the bush only to come face to face with his double—the German Baron von Ragastein. When Dominey returns to London months later and resumes his glittering social life, suspicions rise: Is this really Dominey, or a German agent infiltrating high society on the eve of war?
