First MIBs Novel?
Was one of the earliest "men in black" fictional tales, about three MIBs, published five years before the turn of the 20th century? Perhaps so. This is a significant book written about three men in a secret organization in pursuit of a man "with spectacles" who possesses a vanished Roman coin denoting important mystic symbolism. The Three Impostors "is the story of three men too absorbed by their own literary interests to realize the truth, or otherwise, of the events unfolding around them. These are Dyson, in thrall to his own imagination, Phillipps, an adherent to science, and Russell, who simply considers himself a realist," writes critic Mark Anderson. Dyson, the man without a first name, lives in a "couple of rooms in a moderately quiet street in Bloomsbury," nevertheless, and is interested in what happened in the streets "beyond Whitechapel" (known infamously for the Jack the Ripper killings). Charles Phillipps lives "in a ...