Theodore Racksole, an immensely rich American, is dining at the Grand Babylon, the most exclusive luxury hotel in London, when the hotel's rigid etiquette refuses his daughter the simple supper she has asked for. Affronted and amused, he does the only thing a man of his fortune and temperament would do: on the spot, almost as a whim, he buys the entire hotel. It is a grand, absurd, impulsive gesture — and it lands Racksole and his fearless daughter Nella in the middle of something far stranger than they bargained for. A celebrated head waiter abruptly resigns. A young German prince, expected on a delicate dynastic errand, fails to arrive. A man dies suddenly in one of the great bedrooms, and then the body itself vanishes. As father and daughter begin, half by accident and half by sheer nerve, to pull at the threads, they uncover a conspiracy that reaches far beyond the hotel's gilded walls — into the royal houses of Europe. First published in 1902 and subtitled by its author A Fantasia on Modern Themes, The Grand Babylon Hotel is Arnold Bennett at his most purely entertaining — a brisk, improbable, thoroughly enjoyable sensation-comedy built for speed and surprise. Behind the glitter runs a sharp Edwardian fascination with money and power, and with the grand luxury hotel as a little kingdom where every nation, class, and secret passes through and brushes against the others. Far from the grey patience of his Five Towns novels, this is Bennett off duty — a master craftsman showing how much fun a thriller can be in the right hands. Fast, witty, and irresistible, it has stayed in print and in affection for more than a hundred years.
