Biggles and the Missing Millionaire

Biggles and the Missing Millionaire
Cover Art	Cover of the book.
Author	W. E. Johns
Publisher	Brockhampton
First Published	1961
Other Editions	4 English
Period	Post World War 2, Air Police
Setting	Caribbean
See all	List of Books by W. E. Johns

Biggles and the Missing Millionaire by W. E. Johns was first published in 1961 by Brockhampton. There have been at least 4 subsequent editions in the English language. The events in the book take place probably around the mid 1950 in England and the Caribbean.

Plot

Note: The sections below contain spoilers. In particular, the plot subpage (click here) has an extended summary of the narrative in the book

Characters

The Special Air Police

• Air Commodore Raymond
• Biggles
• Algy Lacey
• Ginger Hebblethwaite
• Bertie Lissie

Others

• Otto Brandt
• David Vaucher
• Martino Valesid
• Captain MacIrish

• Mr Greene
• Mrs Greene
• Francisco Tristano
• Marcel Brissac

Aircraft

• Gadfly

Ships

• Cordelia
• Queen Pat

Places

Visited

• Falmouth - The Greenbank Hotel
• Hertfordshire - Warleigh Towers

• Tangier International Zone
  • Hotel Alcazar
  • Hotel Castello

• Tangier Airport

• Gibraltar - transit
• Dakar - tranist
• Natal - transit
• Trinidad - transit
• Jamaica - transit
• Nassau - base for operations in the Caribbean

• Isla Santina

Other Research Notes

References to the past

• The events in Biggles in the Blue (published 1953) are mentioned as having taken place "a year or two ago".

Chronology

• A number of references impose constraints on the plausible timeframe for this story:
  • Biggles in the Blue (1953) is described as having taken place only a year or two before.
  • The International Zone of Tangier, which Biggles visited in this story, was abolished in 1956. The area came under the jurisdiction of Morocco after that. Mentions of the "fantastic police arrangements" which made Tangier so suitable for smugglers like Captain MacIrish would not have been valid after 1956.
  • By 1958, Fidel Castro had overthrown the Batista government in Cuba.
• Given the above, a plausible timeframe for the events in this book would be from 1954-1956. This would be just after In the Blue, the International Zone would still be in existence and Cuba would have felt highly threatened by revolutionary movements. Batista himself took over Cuba in a coup in 1952. Revolutionary sentiments were building up in the country in the mid-1950s, and Castro launched his revolution in 1956.
• The only problem here would be the use of the Gadfly which makes its debut in Biggles at World's End (1959). For this timeline to work, World's End must be pushed to before 1956, before Missing Millionaire, and so must Biggles' Combined Operation (1959) because it would be hard to see why Biggles would need to use his Otter amphibian there if he already had the Gadfly.

International titles

• French: Biggles chasse le millionaire (Presses de la Cité 1962)
• Swedish: Biggles och den mystiske miljonären (Wahlströms 1962)
• Norwegian: Biggles og den forsvunne millionær (Forlaghuset 1963)
• Danish: Biggles og den forsvunde millionær (Grafisk Forlag 1968)
• Czech: Biggles a muž, který zmizel (Toužimsky & Moravec 2002)