The Man Who Was Thursday – G.K. Chesterton

This is a highly entertaining romp from 1908 about a bunch of stiff upper lipped English types battling anarchy. There is a mixture of detective and adventure styles, and the characters tend to speak in somewhat unlikely epigrams. The reader is expected to share assumptions about such untrustworthy types as Jews, Frenchmen and vegetarians – although to be fair these assumptions are as often as not undermined by the next plot twist.