Books by Adam Dumphy

Little known to this day is the fact that the fate of France in the Phony War of 1939-40 was fought out as much in the salons of the 'Faubourg' as in the Chamber of Deputies or on the battlefields where there were no battles.Two women who could be called the mistresses of the most powerful men in the French government waged a savage war, jousting for power and position to the degree that the German menace was at times secondary. A pout might remove a minister from office; a smile determine his replacement; a tear determine national policy.These things are fact. In a from here on fictionalized account an elderly American experimenter in advanced wireless telegraphy is asked by British Intelligence to determine who is giving the Head of the French Government a great deal of bad information. With the aide of a renowned beauty of the haut monde, now however a convicted felon, he determines that the grandson of one of the mistresses is held captive by the Abwehr to force her to influence her man as they wish.In the attempt to rescue the child and get him out of the country the old man proves that even in this chaos of corruption, graft and outright treason there can also be follies in both senses of the word.

A story within a story, this is a romantic novel in the style of the 1940's, which means it is brief, simple, plausible and clean. The first protagonist, a Hessian Lt. with Burgoyne's Army at Saratoga in 1777, and an ancestor of the author, is sent with dispatches to General Cornwallis at Charleston. On a subsequent (fictional) trip his troop is ambushed carrying a British war chest of gold intended to equip Scottish Royalist troops in the Georgia hills. Although wounded he is not captured through the kindness of the then Mistress of the Fair Oaks Plantation who secrets him in a hidey-hole of the mansion.What subsequently happens to him is unknown until 1909 when his diary is found between the thick walls of the mansion intact and legible. Legible except that the last pages are written in some strange code and cannot be read.In 1946 Ab Andrus, the only Inheritance Investigator in the South is requested by the State of Georgia to make a formal statement as to the authenticity of the Diary.Like the Hessian he gets to know too warmly the current Mistress of Fair Oaks and both couples learn a great about themselves and each other in their contacts made in the search. One wins his lady and the other does not.