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FFB: The Fortieth Door by Mary Hastings Bradley

Mary Hastings Bradley (1882-1976) published a large number of travel books, short fiction and novels, including mysters and her historical Old Chicago series. Widely-traveled, she often lectured on the topic and was inducted into the Society of Women Geographers, an organization that boasted the likes of members Amelia Earhart, Margaret Mead, and Eleanor Roosevelt. She also worked as a war correspondent for Collier's Magazine during WWII and undertook a survey of concentration camps across Europe, publishing her findings in a highly acclaimed series in the magazine. She met and married Herbert Bradley, a big-game hunter and explorer and traveled extensively with him. They helped to set up the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago and were the parents of another famous writer, James Tiptree Jr (the pen-name of their daughter Alice B Sheldon)

In her younger days, Bradley traveled to Egypt with a cousin, a trip that inspired The Palace of Darkened Windows (1914) and The Fortieth Door (1920), two books that focused on the veiled, secluded women of Egypt. Both of these stories were later made into films, with The Fortieth Door adapted as a silent film in 1924 starring Allene Ray, Bruce Gordon, David Dunbar.

The plot of The Fortieth Door centers on an anti-social American archaeologist working in Cairo named Jack Ryder, who is reluctantly talked into going to a masquerade ball. He dances with a mysterious veiled woman who he understandably believes to be in costume. The sparks fly between them, but when Jack walks the woman home, he learns she's the daughter of a prosperous Muslim merchant and can't date Westerners.

But he can't get her out of his mind and does a little digging of a more personal sort. He discovers that the woman is named Aimée and is actually the daughter of a Frenchman who vanished fifteen years ago. When Jack also discovers Aimée is headed for a forced marriage her "stepfather" has arranged, he hatches a plan to rescue her that could well put both of their lives in jeopardy.

This is a slight, entertaining action/suspense novel with some racism common to its era that today's readers might find offensive, i.e. all of the good guys being white, and all the bad guys Egyptian. But the exotic setting, which is drawn fairly nicely, and the earnest characters (if a little too much like Dudley Do Right vs. the moustache-twirling Snidley Whiplash) make for a quick read.

      


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FFB: The Fortieth Door by Mary Hastings Bradley

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