I read Anthony Hope’s most famous novel, The Prisoner of Zenda, more years ago than I care to remember but I only recently found out that he’d written this sequel. Although its titled for the dastardly villain, Rupert of Hentzau, Rupert doesn’t really appear in the book as often as one would like, as he really is a thoroughly good villain, but Hope does ramp up the conflicts of the first book hugely. In the Prisoner, our hero, Rudolf, has to impersonate the king of Ruritania. In the second, he has to become the king, while impersonating the king, because the king has gone and died, after faffing around in a humiliated tiff that everyong preferred Rudolf as king to him. It’s a book of its time, and I mean that in a good way as it manifests the best of that era while showing few of its failings. A worthy sequel to the original.