The Meinertzhagen Mystery

The Life and Legend of a Colossal Fraud

By Brian Garfield

2007

First Published

3.79

Average Rating

386

Number of Pages

11H47M

Audio Length

Tall, handsome, charming Col. Richard Meinertzhagen (1878–1967) was an acclaimed British war hero, a secret agent, and a dean of international ornithology. His exploits inspired three biographies, movies have been based on his life, and a square in Jerusalem is dedicated to his memory. Meinertzhagen was trusted by Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben Gurion, T. E. Lawrence, Elspeth Huxley, and a great many others. He bamboozled them all. Meinertzhagen was a fraud. Many of the adventures recorded in his celebrated diaries were imaginary, including a meeting with Hitler while he had a loaded pistol in his pocket, an attempt to rescue the Russian royal family in 1918, and a shoot-out with Arabs in Haifa when he was seventy years old. True, he was a key player in Middle Eastern events after World War I, and during the 1930s he represented Zionism's interests in negotiations with Germany. But he also set up Nazi front organizations in England, committed a half-century of major and costly scientific fraud, and—oddly—may have been innocent of many killings to which he confessed (e.g., the murder of his own polo groom—a crime of which he cheerfully boasted, although the evidence suggests it never occurred at all). Further, he may have been guilty of at least one homicide of which he professed innocence. A compelling read about a flamboyant rogue, The Meinertzhagen Mystery shows how recorded history reflects not what happened, but what we believe happened.

Avg Rating

3.79

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

21%

4 STARS

45%

3 STARS

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2 STARS

1 STARS

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Author

Brian Garfield

Author · 20 books

Brian Francis Wynne Garfield was an American novelist and screenwriter. He wrote his first published book at the age of eighteen and wrote several novels under such pen names as "Frank Wynne" and "'Brian Wynne" before gaining prominence when his book Hopscotch (1975) won the 1976 Edgar Award for Best Novel. He is best known for his 1972 novel Death Wish, which was adapted for the 1974 film of the same title, followed by four sequels, and a remake starring Bruce Willis. His follow-up 1975 sequel to Death Wish, Death Sentence, was very loosely adapted into a film of the same name which was released to theaters in late 2007, though an entirely different storyline, but with the novel's same look on vigilantism. Garfield is also the author of The Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History. Garfield's latest book, published in 2007, is Meinertzhagen, the biography of controversial British intelligence officer Richard Meinertzhagen. Brian Garfield was the author of more than 70 books that sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, and 19 of his works were made into films or TV shows.He also served as president of the Western Writers of America and the Mystery Writers of America. Brian Garfield passed away on December 29, 2018 at his home in Pasadena, California. He had struggled with Parkinson's Disease during the last years of his life.