MISTRESS OF DARKNESS [The Emperor’s Secret Files] by Charles Lee Jackson II

Another Swashbuckling crusader for Justice makes her dramatic debut in four pulp-style adventures crammed into a single volume.

Meet Gillian Thorkel, a scientist who is forced to adopt the tools and techniques of the burglar to recover her intellectual property, stolen by unscrupulous businessmen. The outcome of her first “caper” shows her a new calling in life, protecting other inventors from swindlers, robbers, and Big Business, prompting her to create the character of Cat’s-Eye… the Mistress of Darkness.

Victimized by her employers, Jill Thorkel uses her wits and her amazing lens – that permits one to see in almost utterly light-less conditions – to not only turn the tables on them but to create an alibi for herself when she becomes the suspect in the burglary that recovers her property. To accomplish this she must create a very complex… “Optical Illusion.”

Jill Thorkel hopes to use her new alter-ego to aid other scientists, and sends out the word. When she gets a response, she finds Cat’s-Eye defending an inventor against not one but two adversaries, as the mysterious Wizard and the forces of Continent-Eight, the international Executive of Crime, each vie for new devices in a real… “Power Struggle.”

Having proved to herself the success of her idea to aid endangered scientists, Cat’-Eye journeys to Maryland where a professor’s latest invention is being threatened by a villain known as “the Eye”. She has no idea that Continent-Eight is on hand as well, nor does she realize the convolutions surrounding… “The Daycroft Periscope.”

It was only a matter of time; Cat’s-Eye, protectress of science, had to run up into Xavier Xavier, misappropriator of science! When Doctor Double X attacks Jill’s old college professor, she moves to the defense, and finds an ally in Sergeant Ed Green, close friend of the Emperor himself. Ed and Cat’s-Eye find that… “Double X Marks the Spot.”

"Wow! How does Jackson keep coming up with all these great new superheroines and superheroes?" —David McDaniel, spy novelist, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Dagger Affair (and many others within the series); The Prisoner: Who is Number Two.