However, whilst Brandon and Trench were convicted (one admitted to hearing of the book, the other to liking it so much they read it three times), the heroes of The Riddle of the Sands were successful, unearthing a secret anti-British German plot. The locations they were sniffing around were similar in fiction and reality, with Nodeney and Wangerooge featuring in both.
The parallels were obvious: the book, like reality, featured two bungling gentleman spies. During the court case, one of the lawyers held up a copy of The Riddle of the Sands and asked the accused spies if they had read it. Several years after The Riddle of the Sands was first published and became a bestseller, one of the first British spy cases came before the German courts – the so-called Brandon-Trench affair, named after the two Britons (correctly) convicted of spying.
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