The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is a patriotic British 1903 novel by Erskine Childers.<br />It is a novel that &quot;owes a lot to the wonderful adventure novels of writers like Rider Haggard, that were a staple of Victorian Britain&quot;; perhaps more significantly, it was a spy novel that &quot;established a formula that included a mass of verifiable detail, which gave authenticity to the story &ndash; the same ploy that would be used so well by John Buchan, Ian Fleming, John le Carr&eacute; and many others.&quot; Ken Follett called it &quot;the first modern thriller.&quot;