The Lost House

MP3 Audio CD. The Lost House by Richard Harding Davis is a mystery story that features all the ingredients that make a mystery plot really great: there is a letter that asks for help, there is an asylum, there is captivity and a reporter-investigator determined to follow every lead he comes across.

The story starts with Austin Ford, a New York reporter having a good time chatting with the Second Secretary at the American Embassy in London. All of a sudden someone enters bringing in a note that has been found in a dark street, in the gutter. The note is a cry for help from a girl who claims to be held in a mental asylum against her will. Ford is an excellent reporter who cannot resist a challenge like this. Though the Second Secretary tries to convince him to drop the case, Ford is already intrigued by the mystery and he decides to follow all the leads to find out who the girl is, why she is kept in a lunatic asylum and who sent her there.

The character of the reporter who follows the story that raised his interest is probably inspired by the author?s own life. After Davis finished college, he started work as a journalist, first in Philadelphia, then in New York. He worked as a war correspondent first during the Spanish-American War, then in the Boer War and in World War I as well. He started writing fiction while still a reporter. His first major success as a fiction writer came in 1897 with the novel entitled Soldiers of Fortune that was turned into a theater play and into film as well. The Lost House was also adapted to the silver screen in 1915 ? the silent film directed by Christy Cabanne was a huge hit as well.