TY  - BOOK
AU  - Le Queux,William
TI  - The crime code
AV  - PR 
PY  - 2026///
CY  - Salt Lake City, UT
PB  - Project Gutenberg
KW  - Detective and mystery stories
KW  - London (England) -- Fiction
KW  - Criminals -- Fiction
KW  - Gangs -- Fiction
KW  - Thrillers (Fiction)
N1  - English edition (Hodder and Stoughton) has title: Double nought; Release date is 2026-04-06; an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer; Originally published; New York: The Macaulay Company, 1928
N2  - "The Crime Code" by William Le Queux is a crime-thriller novel written in the early 20th century. It likely follows Lionel Hipwell, a rising Foreign Office man and would‑be MP, who becomes a fugitive after a fatal street struggle and is swept into a labyrinth of jewel thieves, espionage, and high-stakes intrigue that stretches from London’s underworld to Continental diplomatic salons.

The opening of the story introduces Lionel’s privileged background, secret engagement, and gambling habit before a rainy-night scuffle in Bloomsbury leaves a man dead and Lionel fleeing in panic. He disguises himself as a lorry-driver, returns to London under an alias, and hides in shabby Camberwell lodgings, where a sharp-eyed fellow tenant, Lisely Hatten, begins to suspect him. After a clandestine meeting with his sympathetic father—and fresh press reports revealing the victim was a notorious burglar—Lionel blunders, in a dense fog, into a nearby house where a foreign gang is dividing stolen jewels; Lisely is among them, and they brand Lionel a police spy, planning to blind him. Drugged during the ordeal, he awakens abruptly at a glittering British Embassy dinner in Rome—bewildered, in diplomatic uniform, dancing with the captivating Contessina Angela—before returning to his hotel, where a Swiss-letter awaits, closing this disorienting, high-tension beginning. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
UR  - https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Crime_Code/G6XcTbkCiQAC?hl=en&gbpv=0
UR  - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78372
ER  -