Release date is 2025-12-08

Tim Lindell, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

The Black Parrot by Harry Hervey is a novel written in the early 20th century. It promises an exotic adventure-mystery across Southeast Asia, blending romance, crime, and colonial intrigue as a suave, secretive wanderer and a self-possessed American traveler are drawn into the legend of a master thief known as the Black Parrot.

The opening of the novel follows a bearded stranger calling himself Garon as he arrives in Surabaya with a white cockatoo and a blue slendong, trading cool politeness while quietly probing for a contact from Macassar. Over drinks, a man with scarred wrists recounts the chilling Cayenne legend of “Le Perroquet Noir,” tying recent jewel thefts to a phantom mastermind. Garon sells his bird in a Chinese shop, where a hidden message is deftly extracted from its feathers. The scene shifts to Singapore and then to Bangkok, introducing Lhassa Camber, an independent traveler captivated by Asia, and Captain Barthélemy, her worldly companion; Lhassa accepts the hospitality of Dr. Garth, a blind collector of ships and Buddhas. Meanwhile, Garth’s Eurasian boy Domingo secretly hires a shaven-skulled “monk,” who lingers at the Wat Pra Keo before night falls. That night brings two shocks: word spreads that the Emerald Buddha has been stolen and a priest killed, and Lhassa discovers Dr. Garth strangled in his treasure room with a blue silk cloth like a slendong. As the police are summoned and suspicion thickens, Barthélemy slips away aboard a night steamer, and the elusive man in the blue slendong is glimpsed again at the river’s edge. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Toronto: F. D. Goodchild, 1923