The Riddle Ring

by Justin McCarthy

This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.

382 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1897

About the author

McCarthy began his career as a journalist at age 18 in Cork, Ireland. From 1853 to 1859 he was in Liverpool, on the staff of the Northern Daily Times, during which period he married (in March 1855) Charlotte Ailman. In 1860 he moved to London, as parliamentary reporter to The Morning Star, of which he became editor in 1864.

He gave up his post in 1868, and, after a lecturing tour in the United States, joined the staff of the Daily News as leader-writer in 1870. In this capacity he became one of the most useful and respected upholders of the liberal politics of the time. He lectured again in America in 1870-1871, and again in 1886-1887.

McCarthy's most important work is his History of Our Own Times (vols. I-IV, 1879–1880; vol. V, 1897), which treats of the period between Queen Victoria's accession and her Diamond Jubilee. He also began a History of the Four Georges (1884 1901), of which the latter half was written by his son, Justin Huntly McCarthy. McCarthy also published several novels, including three with Rosa Campbell Praed.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Justin^McCarthy

Reviews

[Kathi Sharp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found on Librovox. Read by Ruth Golding. http://librivox.org/the-riddle-ring-b...

Wonderful story: richly envisioned characters, fully rounded story line. I can easily imagine this as a movie. Some plot points were a bit coincidental but easy enough to overlook. I'm looking forward to tracking down more stories by Justin McCarthy.

[Perry Whitford · Rating 2 out of 5]

An idle Englishman with vague dreams of becoming a novelist is escaping the loss of his 'false true-love' in Paris when he discovers a discarded antique ring with a cryptic engraving, the history of which he begins to construct a fanciful romance about.

Somewhat incredibly, the story he imagines for both the ring and its engraving turns out to be spot on in every particular. As coincidence would have it, he is about to fall in love with the woman who discarded the ring, and also fall in with the man who gave it to her.

Thank God for coincidence, eh? What would the Victorian novelist, the good ones as well as the bad ones, ever have done without it? As feeble as McCarthy's plot is in this frothy, frivolous romance, he would have been completely bereft of one without it. As the two main characters observe:

"London is full of coincidences," Rose observed gravely.
"All right," Jim replied; "let them coincide."

Despite the coincidences I fairly enjoyed the first half of the novel. Before too long though the rather inane nature of the dialogue started to annoy me a bit. Jim becomes involved with 'a comradeship of enterprising gentleman' who obviously have a dark side, yet they talk and act like a bunch of upper class halfwits for the most part.

P.G. Wodehouse would have made these characters both funny and likable, while Evelyn Waugh would have made them funny and dislikable. McCarthy makes them unfunny and irritating.

Not the kind of mindless fluff I expected from a long-standing Member of Parliament.

[Leserling · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is nice enough, and well narrated, but it wasn't a story I listened to with bated breath.
There are a few nice twists and turns, but no characters I could even remotely identify with, or who I really liked a lot.