Secret ciphers. Death rays. The newest guns and fastest cars. A suave government agent fond of cocktails and fancy cigarettes barely escaping death in exotic locales. The trappings of spy yarns are familiar—we know them from James Bond and other tales of page and screen. But they actually follow a blueprint laid out more than a century ago by William Le Queux.

Le Who? Born in 1864, the creator of the dashing-secret-agent genre now lies in the dustbin of history. And yet the writer of thrillers like England’s Peril was a literary innovator and Queen Alexandra’s favorite novelist.

Also, kind of a real-life bad-ass.

(Source: Wired)