A fruit vendor starts talking Gothic. And he is not just talking a language that he cannot know, he actually believes himself to be someone else. The initial diagnosis is clear - it is a mental problem. And then the cases start piling up - people that seem to start being someone else. The doctors and the scientists are helpless to stop whatever is happening - or even to figure out what may be the reason. Until someone has a bright idea and a police officer decides that it must be the same group that had been causing issues anyway - and between the two guesses, the truth start emerging. In the meantime, people start banding together based on what language they understand - they do not remember anything from their lives so that is the only connection they have.

The story is a product of its time - although if you replace the name of the gang with something more modern and you change the weapons, it actually become timeless. The science of the solution does not stand up to the new discoveries and the villain (because there is one) is a comic books level one but it is still a readable story 8 decades later. Although it is a bit overwritten in places - as much as I like action scenes, the ones here were a bit too... comic bookish. ( )