Edgar Wallace's The Frightened Lady

The Frightened Lady is a 1933 Edgar Wallace thriller.

Fairly typically the setting is a country house in England. Marks Priory is the estate of the young Lord Lebanon but he is definitely not in charge. He is entirely under the thumb of his mother. He doesn’t like it but every attempt at rebellion on his part has failed. Lady Lebanon is a formidable woman. She has intense family pride. An expert in heraldry, she is obsessed by the family’s history. She is not not just a Lebanon by marriage but by birth as well. She married her cousin. It is a very ancient family.

Young Lord Lebanon has other problems, specifically the rather sinister Dr Amersham. The relationship between his mother and Dr Amersham is obscure but it does appear that the doctor has some kind of hold over her. The servants detest Dr Amersham, probably with good reason.

Chief Inspector Bill Tanner of Scotland Yard becomes involved with this ancient family when the chauffeur is murdered. Tanner was in fact more or less on the scene at the time. He was in the village, Marks Thornton, investigating a case of counterfeiting.

There are all kinds of tensions at Marks Priory. The gamekeeper Tillings suspects his wife of being unfaithful, possibly with the chauffeur. There are two hardboiled American footmen which is very strange. One has to wonder how on earth they came to be in the service of such an old and distinguished family. Lord Lebanon has tried to dismiss them but has been overruled by his mother. Lady Lebanon’s secretary Ilsa Crane is terrified but nobody knows why. Every member of the family and every member of the staff seems anxious, unhappy and secretive.

And more murders will follow.

There are secrets here, possibly from the past. There might also be a question of money, the Lebanon family being extremely rich. There are sexual tensions. There are jealousies. There could be all sorts of motives for murder here.

Tanner is an efficient cop with an impressive record. His two off-siders are perhaps less formidable. Detective Sergeant Ferraby is young but very keen. Tanner regards Detective Sergeant Totty as the worst detective he has ever encountered, with a tendency to indulge in fanciful speculation. Totty is however almost a genius when it comes to spotting physical clues.

Ferraby gets himself personally involved when he takes a shine to Ilsa Crane.

There are plenty of suspects in the sense that there are plenty of people here with things to hide. Coming up with a plausible explanation for the crimes is a challenge even for a man as experienced as Bill Tanner, and he is unable to connect all the pieces of the puzzle until the very end. Despite his experience he has made a couple of false assumptions.

Wallace invites the reader to make false assumptions as well. He plays fair with the reader but like any good detective story writer he uses misdirection quite skilfully. He allows us to mislead ourselves.

The construction of Marks Priory began in 1160. It has been modified and extended and rebuilt several times. You won’t be at all surprised to learn that it is suspected that the house may contain secret passageways - this is an Edgar Wallace thriller after all.

This is closer to being a straightforward country house murder mystery than the more outrageous type of thriller for which Wallace was known, although there are a few outrageous touches and a few familiar Wallace trademarks.

The Frightened Lady is fine entertainment and is recommended.

The novel was filmed in 1940 as The Case of the Frightened Lady.

Edgar Wallace's The Door with Seven Locks

The Door with Seven Locks is a 1926 Edgar Wallace thriller.

Dick Martin is a young Scotland Yard sub-inspector about to retire because he’s come into money, although now he’s wondering what on earth he’s going to do with himself. Being a cop was his life.

He’s just handled on odd case. He was to arrest a professional burglar named Pheeney but the man has an unusual alibi. At the time he was picking locks, in a totally lawful manner. He had been hired to break into a tomb.

Perhaps as a joke his superintendent assigns Dick to one last case - involving a stolen library book. That case will have surprising consequences. One of the consequence is that he meets an adorable girl named Sybil. The other consequences are more sinister - he meets a doctor named Stalletti. Stalletti occupies his time with some rather startling experiments.

Although Dick doesn’t want to become a private detective his superintendent also suggests he might like to take on a case, on a one-off basis, for a lawyer named Havelock. It involves keeping tabs on the young, unstable, eccentric, world-wandering Lord Selford. Dick is at a loose end and dreads boredom so he accepts.

These three plot strands will soon begin to intersect.

Dick is a bit surprised when someone tries to kill him, and even more surprised that his assailant doesn’t seem to be quite human.

There are also some keys which seem to be important. Sybil has one of these keys. Someone else is very keen to get hold of it.

In fact there are seven keys, and all seven are needed to unlock a door with seven locks. Nobody knows what is behind that door. The door is in the Selford Tombs, a burial complex built into a hillside by one of the current Lord Selford’s distant ancestors. That ancestor was notoriously wicked. The father of the present Lord Selford also had a reputation for wickedness.

There are quite a few shady characters mixed up in this case. Some turn out to be more sinister than initial appearances suggest while others might be fairly harmless common-and-garden crooks.

There are clearly all kinds of secrets associated with the Selford family. Sybil is distantly related to Lord Selford and indeed appears to be his only living relative.

There is a rumour that Selford Manor contains hidden rooms. There are kidnappings. Innocent people are drugged. Telephone lines get cut. There are what appear to be monstrous creatures. There are murders. There are gunfights. There are ancient sins.

Dick Martin naturally falls in love with Sybil, giving him a personal stake in the case. He’s a good detective but he’s dealing with fantastic crimes that are totally outside all his past experience.

Wallace as usual provides plenty of breathless excitement and a delightfully outrageous plot that positively races along. Wallace had a knack for making such plots finally come together in a surprisingly satisfying manner.

And as so often in Wallace’s books there are hints of gothic creepiness. Hugely entertaining and highly recommended

The Door with the Seven Locks was adapted for film in 1962 as an entry in the prolific cycle of German Edgar Wallace krimis (the German name for crime films) made by Rialto. I’ve reviewed that movie as well.

Edgar Wallace's The India-Rubber Men

The India-Rubber Men is a 1929 Edgar Wallace thriller.

London has been hit by a series of daring robberies carried out by men in rubber gas masks, armed with gas bombs. They have become known as the India-Rubber Men.

Inspector John Wade of the river police is interested in the goings-on at the Mecca, a kind of riverfront boarding house for ship’s officers. Not a very reputable establishment. It’s run by Mum Oaks, a very disreputable middle-aged woman. Her niece lives there as well. Lila is a timid but attractive young woman and Inspector Wade has grown rather fond of her.

Wade starts to see some connecting threads but they’re rather puzzling. There’s a penniless lord who isn’t penniless any more. There’s a mysterious sea captain. There’s a mysterious man who takes young Lila out to dinner once a year. There’s a woman who tries to drown herself, and she’s clutching a photograph of Lila. There are numerous attempts on John Wade’s life. There are abductions and a woman is drugged. There are break-ins in which nothing is stolen. There are fast motor launches that appear and disappear. There are suspects who should be thousands of miles away, but they aren’t. There’s a lawyer who knows something. There are links to events in the past. There’s an inheritance.

This is pretty classic Edgar Wallace stuff. Apart from the India-Rubber Men there are small-time river thieves. There are jewel thefts. There are hidden rooms. There’s gunplay (with machine-guns). And Chicago gangsters.

There’s also a policeman in love.

A good deal of the action takes place on the river or at sea. There’s a definite nautical flavour to the activities of the bad guys (and I do love nautical mysteries and thrillers). Naturally there are various sea-going and river-going vessels that seem innocent, even when they’ve been thoroughly searched. But in reality they are far from innocent.

There’s quite a collection of bad guys and it’s not until late in the story that we start to suspect the identity of the most dangerous of the villains. There are quite a few characters who are not at all what they appear to be.

Wallace liked convoluted plots but he was always able to resolve them satisfactorily and this story is no exception.

Wallace also liked to build an atmosphere of breathless excitement and he does that here. There’s suspense, action and last-minute escapes. There’s a very high body count. Wallace was interesting among British writers of that era. He didn’t stint on the murder and mayhem and his villains were violent and ruthless. In some of his books in the 1920s he seemed to be trying to inject a slight American flavour. Not a bad idea since Chicago gangsters were big news at the time.

There’s some romance as well.

Inspector Wade is a likeable enough hero. He bends a few rules, but not too much. He’s also inclined to rely on bluffs, which don’t always come off.

Wallace seemed to be incapable of writing a dull book. He knew his market, he knew the right ingredients to include and he delivered the goods.

This is a fine Edgar Wallace thriller and it’s highly recommended.

Edgar Wallace's The Green Ribbon

The Green Ribbon is a 1929 Edgar Wallace thriller with a racing background.

Edna Gray is a young pretty English girl who has been living in Argentina. At the age of twenty-two she has suddenly become a very rich young woman and she has returned to England to take possession of a rather large but run-down country estate. She intends to live in Longhall, a large rambling neglected old house which forms part of her inheritance. 

On the ship she had met a Mr Luke and they had struck up something of a friendship (although not at this stage a romance).

What she doesn’t know is that Mark Luke in a Scotland Yard Detective Inspector. She also doesn’t know why he’s so interested in Gillywood Farm (which she now owns) or why he has the idea that she might be in danger. It has something to do with her tenant, Mr Goodie. Mr Goodie leases Gillywood Farm for his business which is training racehorses. He has turned the farm into a kind of fortress.

Edna does not like Mr Goodie and she cannot imagine why he wants to buy Longhall or why he is offering her fifty thousand pounds for it, which is at least five times what the property is worth.

Luke also has no idea why Goodie is interested in Longhall but he feels that it is one of the things he needs to find out.

Luke is investigating Mr Trigger’s Transactions. This is a racing racket run by a Mr Trigger. Luke knows this, and he knows that Mr Goodie and a Dr Blanter are involved. Also involved is Arthur Rustem, Edna’s lawyer. Although he’s not really her lawyer now. Since he had an unfortunate misunderstanding with the Law Society he is no longer allowed to practice law but he still manages Edna’s estate.

Luke therefore knows the identity of those involved in the crooked gambling racket and he knows roughly how the swindle is worked. His problem is that it’s not clear that this racket is actually illegal. It’s certainly unethical and dishonest but Mr Trigger has come up with an incredibly profitable operation that remains technically within the law. Or at least it appears to be technically legal. Luke is sure that if he digs deeply enough he will discover something for which the conspirators can be prosecuted.

The scheme is very clever and provides an exceptionally interesting and original driving force for Wallace’s plot. It also adds a bit more suspense. Luke is convinced that Edna is in danger but he can’t protect her by arresting those who endanger her, and he can’t even figure out exactly why she is in danger. There’s also the mysterious behaviour of Mr Garcia, an old family friend of Edna’s who suddenly disappeared and then turned up in Constantinople.

The estate provides a perfect setting for Wallace’s purposes. There may not be any secret passageways in Longhall but there is an elaborate cave system nearby which is just as much fun. And there are plenty of classic Wallace ingredients. There is murder. There is racetrack skullduggery. There are Mr Goodie’s huge savage dogs. There are odd mysteries - why did Mr Goodie suddenly have to move all his stables? There’s a collapsible aeroplane. There are car chases. There are exotic poisons. There are hints of sexual depravity, and drug-taking. And there’s some romance.

Edna is a personable heroine. She’s no fool but she has no idea how she managed to find herself in the middle of such a complex and dangerous situation. Mr Luke is also a likeable hero, intelligent without being brilliant and confident without being arrogant.

And there are plenty of villains. Some of the bad guys are truly twisted and malevolent, others are just greedy and short-sighted and some are slightly ambiguous. You don’t know which of the villains are the ones to really worry about until late in the story.

A great racetrack mystery thriller and although the criminal scheme is complicated Wallace gives us enough racing background to make it perfectly comprehensible once the details are revealed.

The Green Ribbon is top-tier Wallace. Highly recommended.

Edgar Wallace's On the Spot

On the Spot is a 1931 Edgar Wallace crime thriller set in Chicago during the heady days of Prohibition.

Tony Perelli is a Big Shot, one of the biggest racketeers in Chicago. He’s ruthless but he’s smart. Tony don’t want no trouble. If someone is causing trouble, Tony gets a couple of his boys to take the guy for a ride. There’s nothing personal in it. It’s just business. He’s not a mere hoodlum. Tony would never have some body bumped off just for the hell of it. But sometimes it’s necessary.

Tony’s main rival is Irish gangster Mick Feeney. Feeney is tough but he’s not as smart as Tony. Feeney’s chief lieutenant, Shaun O’Donnell, is another matter. O’Donnell is clever and patient. And Feeney’s gang have been muscling in on Tony’s territory. Something will have to be done about that.

Tony had had plenty of women, but he’s never had a woman like Minn Lee. Mine Lee is half-Chinese and all beautiful. And she’s not your typical gangster’s moll. Tony doesn’t really understand her, but insofar as he is capable of loving a woman he loves her. He loves her the way he loves all his other possessions. He likes to be surrounded by beautiful things. All the beautiful things money can buy including women. He thinks maybe she loves him, but he’s not quite sure.

Everything on the home front is going just swell for Tony until he meets Maria. Maria is Con O’Hara's woman. O’Hara is an out-of-town torpedo who does a lot of jobs for Tony. He’s a killer and he’s good at his job. There’s no subtlety to the man but if some guy is causing trouble O’Hara is the boy to take care of it. He’s been killing professionally since he was a teenager. Unfortunately O’Hara is pretty attached to Maria.

Then there’s Jimmy McGrath, a nice college boy from the east. Tony thinks he can find a place for Jimmy in his organisation but he’s not sure what that place might be. Maybe Jimmy could be a fixer. A fixer has to be smart and be able to present himself as respectable. Tony already has a fixer, a really good one, Victor Vinsetti, but he’ll find something for Jimmy. Of course first Jimmy will have to kill for him. You can’t trust a guy until he’s killed for you.

Jimmy is in love with Minn Lee. Vinsetti is in love with her as well. She has that effect on men. They don’t just want her, they fall in love with her.

Of course anyone with a thorough knowledge of the Chicago underworld of the Roaring Twenties would undoubtedly spot lots of inaccuracies in this account (and some of the characters sound disturbingly cockney in their speech patterns) Wallace being an Englishman with no firsthand knowledge of the subject. It doesn’t matter. Wallace knows how to tell an engrossing tale.

And Tony Perelli and Minn Lee are intriguing characters. Tony’s great love is Italian opera. He considers himself to be a civilised man. He says he’d happily run his rackets without ever killing anybody but there are always guys who want to make trouble and they have to be dealt with. He has a genuine fondness for both Jimmy and Minn Lee, the kind of fondness a man feels for beautiful things that he owns.

Minn Lee has had many men. When one man goes out of her life she finds another, without any fuss. But while she’s with a man she is a one-man woman. She has a code of honour. A woman should be devoted to her man. Whether she loves him or not is immaterial. She has never loved a man. Although that might be about to change. Tony’s life might be about to change as well, but he doesn’t know it yet.

There’s as much murder and mayhem as you could desire in this gangster potboiler. There’s also a kind of love story and there’s the story of a fascinating woman. Being an Edgar Wallace novel it is also naturally highly entertaining. Recommended.

Edgar Wallace’s The Daffodil Mystery

Edgar Wallace’s The Daffodil Mystery was published in 1920. While Wallace was best known for his thrillers he wrote straight murder mysteries as well and The Daffodil Mystery falls into the latter category. It also appeared under the alternative title The Daffodil Murder.

Mr Thornton Lyne is a very rich young man. He owns a very lucrative business which he inherited from his father, his own contribution to the business being negligible. He has enjoyed every advantage in life. He fancies himself as a poet although those who have have read his one small published volume of verse are inclined to disagree. He is a poseur. He is also a very unpleasant young man and he has been making himself particularly offensive to one of his female employees, a Miss Odette Rider. She has rejected his advances and since spitefulness is another of his unattractive qualities he is determined to revenge himself upon her. His idea is to engage the well-known private detective Jack Tarling to help him frame Odette for an imaginary crime. Tarling indignantly refuses.

And then Thornton Lyne gets himself murdered. His body is found, minus coat and waistcoat and wearing slippers. Most curiously a bunch of daffodils has been placed on his chest.

Scotland Yard calls on Tarling help in this case because of a curious note, written in Chinese, found on the body. Tarling had been a very successful police detective in Shanghai and he has a Chinese assistant, Ling Chu. Ling Chu is most emphatically not a servant but a colleague and is a formidable detective in his own right.

The evidence all points towards Odette’s guilt but Tarling finds her to be a charming young woman and while nothing will deflect him from the path of duty he finds himself hoping that Odette will prove to be innocent.

The plot has some of the outrageousness you expect from Wallace but in spite of its convolutions the solution is simple and makes sense. As you might expect from Ling Chu’s presence the events of the present day have links to events in the past in China.

In 1920 the idea of the fair-play mystery has not yet been formalised. Insofar as writers played fair with their readers they did so by avoiding impossibilities in the plotting and by providing a puzzle that the detective could plausibly solve based on the clues available to him, clues that were not necessarily revealed to the reader until the ending. In spite of this there is one definite clue that does point very clearly to the identity of the criminal. Unless of course (like me) you manage to miss its significance! There are multiple suspects and they’re all quite plausible. And there is an unbreakable alibi as well.

Of course being a Wallace novel it has more action than the average detective novel.

The golden age of detective fiction had scarcely even begun when The Daffodil Mystery appeared but the idea of a murderer adding some bizarre touch to the victim’s body (in this case the daffodils) was one that would be used quite often by golden age writers, notably John Dickson Carr in the wonderful The Mad Hatter Mystery and Ellery Queen in The Chinese Orange Mystery (and the latter of course has a China connection as well).

Ling Chu is quite an interesting character. He is honest, but sometimes he is honest in a misleading way. He takes care of the investigation of most of the vital physical clues including some very puzzling footprints. He’s not quite an early anticipation of Charlie Chan. He’s a lot more ruthless for one thing - he has his own ideas about the way to interrogate suspects and they’re not for the faint-hearted. Sometimes bad men try to lie to detectives but they don’t lie to Ling Chu.

Tarling also has a certain nostalgia for his earlier career in Shanghai when the rules under which policemen operated were much more flexible. Working for Scotland Yard can be a bit restrictive.

It's perhaps worth pointing out that despite the China connection and the slightly lurid cover this is not by any stretch of the imagination a Yellow Peril novel.

The Daffodil Mystery represents the slightly less outlandish side to Edgar Wallace but it’s still thoroughly enjoyable. Recommended.

Edgar Wallace's The Black Abbot

The Black Abbot, which first saw the light of day in 1926, has absolutely everything an Edgar Wallace fan could wish for. There’s a malevolent ghost, buried treasure, the elixir of life, a crooked lawyer, a tangled romance, a scheming young woman, another young woman facing a fate much worse than death, an atmosphere of breathless excitement and non-stop Edgar Wallace thrills.

Harry Alford, 18th Earl of Chelford, is a pale bookish highly strung young man, the very model of the decadence of a decaying aristocracy. Dick Alford is the unlucky second son of the previous earl. Dick has all the virtues of the aristocracy in its heyday - he’s brave and noble with a selfless devotion to the land, the people and the rich Chelford estates. He has some modern virtues as well. He is intelligent and industrious and level-headed. Alas it seems like none of this is going to do him any good. Harry inherited the estates, the money and the title. Dick inherited nothing. It’s Dick who keeps the estates going but in his own right he has nothing.

Harry is engaged to be married to Leslie Gine, the sister of a prominent local solicitor and the heiress to a vast fortune. The match seems ideal but for one or two problems. Leslie doesn’t love the pale scholarly young earl while Harry is indifferent to her charms. He is indifferent to everything apart from his peculiar obsessions. Four four hundred years the legend has persisted that there is an immense trove of gold buried somewhere on the Chelford estates. Harry hopes to find the treasure but it’s not the gold he wants, it’s something else mentioned in the legend, the elixir of life, brought back to England from the New World in Elizabethan times.

There’s another legend as well, of a sinister black abbot who stalks the estate, the ghost of an abbot murdered many centuries before in scandalous circumstances involving the sort of sexual impropriety that no abbot should have been indulging in. 

There is another suitor for the hand of Leslie Gine and he is in a peculiarly favourable position to press his claim. It’s not that Leslie wants to marry Harry. She’d prefer to marry Dick Alford. Dick favours this idea as well but it all seems hopeless and meanwhile there are nefarious schemes afoot for other matrimonial alliances. Everybody has money troubles and they all like the idea of solving those problems by marrying money. The difficulty is in figuring out who actually has money and who just seems to have money.

Everybody wants the Chelford gold as well, and they’re prepared to resort to ruthless methods. Of course the ghostly Black Abbot may also have something to say on the subject. And of course it all leads to murder and mayhem.

The plot is delightfully convoluted and outlandish. There are villains aplenty. Everyone seems to have an ingenious scheme to get what they want but all those ingenious schemes are hopelessly in conflict with each other. Temporary alliances are formed but always with the intention of an eventual double-cross. 

The interesting thing about the characters is that they don’t always behave the way you expect them to. Upon reflection they actually behave realistically, but not necessarily in accordance with the conventions of the genre. The plot is melodramatic to a high degree  but the villains are not melodrama villains.

Of course given the setting - an ancient manor house and an adjoining ruined abbey - there are secret passageways and hidden chambers and all manner of unexpected perils. This being an Edgar Wallace thriller we’re naturally sceptical about the ghostly nature of the Black Abbot but while he may be no ghost he is certainly likely to be murderous.

It all adds up to great entertainment. Once Wallace reveals the solution to the big mystery the book really kicks into high gear with an exciting and very tense climactic episode which then leads us to the solution of the remaining mysteries.

In 1963 this novel was made into one of the best of the German Edgar Wallace krimi movies, and this movie version of The Black Abbot is one I heartily recommend.

The Black Abbot is non-stop fun, one of Wallace’s best. Very highly recommended.

Edgar Wallace’s Big Foot

Edgar Wallace’s 1927 thriller Big Foot is one of his more obscure novels but it’s actually rather a treat.

Wallace had a knack for creating wonderfully colourful and eccentric detectives (such as Mr J. G. Reeder). Big Foot features another Wallace detective who is just as much fun. Detective Superintendent Patrick Minter (universally known as Sooper) is scruffy, elderly, cantankerous, possibly a bit senile and his best days are long behind him. At least that’s what he hopes wrongdoers will assume. In reality Sooper is as sharp as a tack. He belongs to the popular category of detectives who rely on appearing to be no threat at all to a clever criminal.

Sooper rides an ancient and horrifically noisy motorcycle, keeps chickens and regards modern scientific methods of detection with contempt. He has no time for the’rising and he abhors anthr’pology and psych’logy. He believes a detective should keep his eyes open and rely on dogged perseverance. 

Sooper’s bête noire is retired lawyer and keen amateur detective Cardew. Cardew is an enthusiast for scientific criminology, much to Sooper’s disgust.

Both Sooper and Cardew are anxious to solve the mystery of Big Foot, an ingenious murderer who always seems to stay one step ahead of them. The murder of Cardew’s housekeeper is especially baffling - the cottage in which she was slain was under close police observation at the time and the murder seems to be quite impossible.

Sooper’s young friend from the Public Prosecutor’s office, Jim Ferraby. is drawn into this mystery and in the process falls in love with Cardew’s beautiful young American secretary.

This being an Edgar Wallace thriller there are naturally plenty of bizarre elements - giant footprints and a singing tramp being the most noteworthy.

Wallace wrote some fine tales of pure detection but most of his books are thrillers rather than detective stories. Big Foot has a mystery plot at its heart but the tone places it squarely in the thriller camp. Wallace does however display considerable skill in misdirection and he does provide enough clues to point the reader in the right direction (although he still managed to fool me quite successfully).

It’s the personality of Sooper that carries this book. He really is a delight. He’s irascible, slovenly and in his own offbeat way outrageously egotistical but it’s impossible not to love him. He’s both the hero and the main comic relief character and he succeeds splendidly in both roles. 

Wallace’s frenetically energetic and amusing style adds to the fun.

Big Foot is Edgar Wallace at the top of his game. Highly recommended. 

Edgar Wallace's Terror Keep

Terror Keep is a 1927 Edgar Wallace thriller featuring perhaps the most memorable of all Wallace’s heroes, Mr J. G. Reeder.

In 1924 Wallace had introduced the reading public to Mr. J. G. Reeder in his novel Room 13. Reeder is at pains to point out that he is not a detective, which is technically true. He is not a policeman, and has no power to arrest suspects. He works as an investigator of banking crime, particularly forgery. He is nonetheless the terror of the criminal classes. Mr Reeder is an insignificant little middle-aged man with a decidedly old-fashioned appearance, and in fact an old-fashioned outlook on life. But appearances are deceptive. Mr Reeder is a man possessed of a keen and subtle intelligence and he understands how the criminal mind works. He is also possessed of a steely determination to see justice done. He is outwardly diffident and even timid but the reality is that criminals are far more afraid of him than he is of them.

Reeder plays a relatively minor role in the novel. Wallace however was no fool and he realised this was a character with real potential. He therefore revived the character in a 1925 collection of short stories, The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder. By this time Mr Reeder has moved on to a job with the Public Prosecutor’s Office where he can extend his war on the criminal classes to a much larger field of crimes. This collection is one of Wallace’s best works. The author was however not yet done with Mr J. G. Reeder, and he found himself the hero of Wallace’s 1927 thriller Terror Keep.

The stories in The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder are very much detective stories. The character might not have seemed quite so suitable to serve as a hero of a thriller but Mr Reeder rises to the occasion in impressive fashion.

Of all the criminals now serving prison sentences as a result of Mr Reeder’s activities few have been as brilliant or as dangerous as Crazy John Flack. Flack is not actually in prison; he has been confined for life to the asylum for criminal lunatics at Broadmoor. Flack is both a genius of crime and a madman. When he was committed to Broadmoor he vowed to have his revenge on J. G. Reeder. Now he has escaped, and intends to pursue two projects dear to his disordered but brilliant mind, the resumption of his criminal career and the destruction of Mr Reeder.

Mr Reeder is not especially concerned about the threat to his own safety. He believes he is a match for any criminal. He is however worried that Crazy John might strike at him through Miss Margaret Belman. Miss Belman is a young lady of Mr Reeder’s acquaintance of whom he is extremely fond. Mr Reeder is not a man who has ever had either the time or the inclination for romantic attachments but he has to admit to himself that he really does find Miss Belman’s company to be remarkably congenial. Even more remarkable is the fact that Miss Belman seems equally fond of his company.

Reeder decides it would be best to get Miss Belman out of London and he manages, discreetly and without her knowledge, to secure her a position in the country as a kind of secretary-manageress at Larmes Keep. Larmes Keep is an ancient castle that has been converted into a boarding house, but a very exclusive boarding house indeed.

In fact Larmes Keep proves to be very far from being a safe place to be. 

Mr Reeder’s pursuit of Crazy John Flack will eventually bring him to Larmes Keep as well as the two main strands of the plot gradually weave themselves together.

The climax of the book is a real tour-de-force on Wallace’s part, so I do not intend to offer any hints as to its nature.

The problem facing any author attempting detective stories at this time was the problem of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes had established a complete dominance of the field of fictional detectives, and in the 1920s his popularity was as great as ever. Indeed Conan Doyle was still writing Sherlock Holmes stories in that decade. Anyone trying to create a fictional detective had to find a way to avoid the accusation of merely creating a Sherlock Holmes clone. There were two possible solutions to this dilemma. One was to create a detective who was as colourless as possible, in contrast to the very colourful and eccentric Sherlock Holmes. The other was to create a detective who was just as colourful, but in a manner that was as different as possible from Holmes. 

Wallace solved the problem brilliantly by adopting both options at once. Mr J. G. Reeder is so insignificant that his insignificance becomes a major eccentricity in its own right. And Reeder is mild-mannered and socially awkward and at the same time he pursues wrong-doers with the deadly cold-bloodedness and single-mindedness of a snake stalking its prey. Mr Reeder also has a very definite if offbeat sense of humour. For a man who could easily be mistaken for an ageing and rather lowly civil servant J. G. Reeder is in fact one of the most delightfully memorable fictional detectives in the genre.

Terror Keep includes one feature you would not normally expect to find in an Edgar Wallace thriller - character development. In the course of the novel J. G. Reeder changes quite a great deal. In fact he changes so much that in some respects this had to be his final adventure, since he is by the end of the book not quite the same man he was. His character being now complete he was no longer a suitable character for any further stories although he does pop up in one or two screenplays Wallace wrote during the late 20s.

Terror Keep is an exceptionally effective and thoroughly entertaining thriller. Highly recommended.

The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder

Edgar Wallace first introduced his detective Mr J. G. Reeder to the world in his 1924 novel Room 13. Although Mr Reeder played a subsidiary role in the novel the character’s potential was obvious to Wallace and in 1925 he penned a short story collection, The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder, in which this unlikely sleuth would take centre stage.

Mr J. G. Reeder works for the Public Prosecutor. He is a quietly spoken middle-aged man who dresses in a very old-fashioned manner and sports even more old-fashioned whiskers. He is to all outward appearances a harmless and slightly pathetic nonentity. Many members of the criminal fraternity have made the error of taking these outward appearances at face value; all have paid heavily for their mistake. As a Scotland Yard inspector remarks in one of the stories Mr Reeder may look like a frightened rabbit but in reality the animal he most closely resembles is the deadly green mamba. One bite and you’re dead in two seconds.

In his early career Mr Reeder had specialised in the detection of bank robbers and forgers, and more particularly counterfeiters. His appointment to the Public Prosecutor’s office offers him the opportunity to come to grips with a much wider sample of the criminal classes.

Mr Reeder considers himself to have a criminal brain. He know what a criminal is likely to do before the criminal himself is aware of it, and he knows all their weaknesses and the best ways of exploiting them.

The eight short stories in this collection deal with a disappearance at sea that is less innocent than it appears to be, with a Hindu criminal mastermind, counterfeiters, dissipated members of the nobility, embezzlers, a fraudulent scheme for finding sunken treasure and an assortment of gangsters. There are frequent murders, more often than not carried out by unusual and exotic means.

In the 1920s Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was the reigning king of the thriller writers. His output was staggeringly vast and his sales were, by the standards of the day, astronomical. At one point it was estimated that one in every four books sold in Britain was authored by Edgar Wallace. He was execrated by the critics but he took no heed of such minor annoyances and his books just kept on selling.

While most of Wallace’s books were out-and-out thrillers, this being the genre that brought him his greatest fame, The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder sees him turning his hand to the detective story, with considerable success. His plots are outrageous but cunningly contrived and there is not a single weak story in this collection.

Mr J. G. Reeder is a delightful creation. Despite his mild-mannered appearance he is one of the most intriguing of all fictional detectives. Wallace followed up the success of this collection with two more novels and another short story collection featuring this oddest of sleuths. The character would appear in several movies and in an excellent late 1960s television adaptation of The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder.

Wordsworth have published two of the Mr Reeder novels, Room 13 and Terror Keep, along with the first Mr Reeder short story collection in a volume entitled The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder. This volume represents outstanding value for money.

The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder is magnificent entertainment from a master story teller and I recommend it very highly indeed.

Edgar Wallace’s The Feathered Serpent

Edgar Wallace’s The Feathered Serpent is a typical Wallace thriller, and as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing wrong that. It has murder and it has secret societies and old grudges that demand to be settled.

A number of people receive threateningd cards emblazoned with the device of a feathered serpent, a device that we later find is associated with ancient Aztec religion and with a cult that still exists in Mexico and Central America. While they try to make light of it they are obviously deeply disturbed, and they just as obviously have some idea of the significance of the device. But they’re not telling.

Reporter Peter Dewin tends to be sceptical of the existence of secret societies but he can’t help being intrigued.

My Leicester Crewe, a mysterious financier, the origin of whose fortune is unknown, is one of the recipients. Another is publican Joe Farmer, while the popular actress Ella Creed also received one. There’s also Mr Crewe’s friend Paula Staines, who obviously knows what these cards mean as well.

During the course of his investigation Peter Dewin makes the acquaintance of Leicester Crewe’s private secretary, Miss Daphne Olroyd, and is clearly rather smitten with her. Miss Olroyd is anxious to change jobs and she takes a position with Mr Gregory Beale. Beale is a typical upper-class socialist with romantic notions about improving the lot of the poor. He’s a multi-millionaire and has given much of his fortune away to the poor although he’s still a very rich man. He lived along the poor under various assumed names, which probably helped to dispel his romanic ideas about them. He then retuned to his first love, the study of the ancient cultures of Central America. He has just returned to London after spending several years on archaeological digs there, with a load of Aztec and Mayan artifacts (including numerous statuettes of feathered serpents). In due course he will also receive one of the threatening cards.

Dewin will discover the existence of a large-scale forgery ring several years ago and suspects that it has something to do with the recent events. One of the criminals in this ring was William Lane, now deceased. Or is he deceased? Leister Crewe certainly hopes so. Dewin will pick up leads from several ex-convicts and will discover that the Feathered Serpent seems to be some sort of secret society flourishing in His Majesty’s prisons.

The Feathered Serpent case will eventually lead to murder and two kidnappings.

It’s the sort of thing that Edgar Wallace did supremely well. It hardly qualifies as believable but Wallace had a knack for spinning these outrageous yarns and making them seen plausible. He was also unfailingly entertaining. There are plenty of breathless thrills and a conspiracy that seems to deepen by the day. There are plenty of colourful characters nine of whom are quite what they appear to be.

Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was an incredibly prolific and extremely popular author, writing no less than 175 novels. He was even more popular on the Continent than he was in Britain and his books have been adapted for so many movies that it’s almost impossible to keep count of them, but the number certainly exceeds 160.

The Feathered Serpent was originally published in 1932, not long before Wallace’s untimely death.

It’s all great fun and Wallace keeps the action moving along swiftly, as he always did. Wonderful entertainment and highly entertaining. If you haven’t discovered the joys of Wallace’s thrillers there is a good place to start. Highly recommended.

The Four Just Men, by Edgar Wallace

Edgar Wallace achieved overnight success with his first novel in 1905, The Four Just Men. It’s important historically because it effectively created a new genre, the modern thriller. In fact many of Wallace’s crime novels are either thrillers or combine the mystery and thriller genres. The Four Just Men can also be seen as the first of the “wealthy amateur crime-fighters taking the law into their own hands” stories that became such a feature of 20th century pulp fiction and comics. Their use of elaborate disguises even anticipates the vogue for masked avengers.

The Four Just Men of the title have all been victims of injustice and have grown disillusioned with the ability of the law adequately to mete out justice to wrong-doers. They have embarked on a campaign of vigilante justice, acting as both judges and executioners and when the novel starts they have already claimed more than a dozen victims, including crooked financiers, corrupt public servants, political tyrants and even poets (for corrupting the morals of youth).

Their latest target is the British Foreign Secretary, who has introduced a bill into Parliament that would result in the forcible return to Spain of large numbers of exiled dissidents and would-be revolutionaries. They are determined to stop this bill, if necessary by assassinating the Foreign Secretary. Their methods of murder are always ingenious and unconventional, presenting a formidable challenge to Superintendent Falmouth of Scotlard Yard, the man charged with protecting the life of the embattled Cabinet Minister.

Apart from its clever plotting and its effective use of suspense it’s also a surprising subtle and ambiguous novel. While most of the victims of these vigilantes are criminals some are merely political opponents, and the British Foreign Secretary is most definitely not a bad man. If anything he’s a man of great courage and integrity. So are the Four Just men heroes or villains?

Wallace’s popularity as an author was immense, to an extent that makes him the forerunner of the celebrity writers of our own age. No less than 160 movies have been made from his books, more than from the work of any author of modern times. Like all of Wallace’s books this one is hugely entertaining.

Edgar Wallace's The Yellow Snake

The Yellow Snake is a delightfully trashy and outrageous 1926 thriller by Edgar Wallace.

As you might gather from the title this time Wallace is dealing with the Yellow Peril. To be more specific, a nefarious Chinese secret society known as the Joyful Hands.

Stephen Narth is a crooked British merchant banker. He has been speculating with client’s money, and needs to find £50,000 to keep out of prison. Suddenly salvation seems to be at hand. A distant relative, Joe Bray, has made a fortune from mining and trading in China and has unexpectedly left his fortune to Narth. Only there are complications. Bray’s will stipulates that in order for this fortune to come his way Narth must ensure that one of his daughters should marry Bray’s mine manager Clifford Lynne.

Stephen Narth’s daughters, Mabel and Letty, are very anxious to marry money but they take one look at Clifford Lynne and refuse to have anything to do with the scheme. He has a long bushy beard, is generally unkempt and dresses eccentrically. And he is, after all, a mere employee of their distant relative. They come up with a clever plan - the will actually stipulate that Clifford should marry a female member of Narth’s family, not necessarily a daughter. So they will force their penniless cousin Joan Bray to marry the uncouth mine manager.

Joan agrees and it’s soon clear she’s made a rather good bargain - once he’s cleaned up Lynne is actually quite good-looking. And he’s not a mere employee. In fact he owns considerably more of the Yun Nan Concessions than Joe Bray does. He is immensely wealthy. He’s certainly eccentric but Joan has already decided that he’s rather fascinating.

Salvation hasn’t come quite in time for Stephen Narth - he needs the £50,000 immediately. Now another benefactor appears on the scene - the fabulously wealthy Oxford-educated Chinese businessman Grahame St Clay (whose real name is Fing-Su). He lends Stephen the money he needs, but this loan very definitely comes with strings attached. The unlucky banker is now well and truly in Fing-Su’s clutches and is hopelessly involved in the conspiracies of the Joyful Hands.

Fing-Su’s immediate objective is to obtain one of the 49 founder shares in the Yun Nan Concession. These are the only shares with voting rights and he already has 24. Once he has control he intends to use the company’s immense wealth to finance a very ambitious plan. He is aiming at nothing less than control of China. He is of course quite mad.

To get this share from Clifford Lynne he needs to exert some pressure, and he decides the best way is by threatening Lynne’s intended bride.

There are countless further plot complications including several murders and kidnappings and a horrific initiation ritual that Stephen Narth must endure. Clifford and Joan find themselves menaced at every step by ruthless assassins.

it goes without saying that this is a very politically incorrect book, if that’s something that bothers you.

It’s all outlandish to the highest degree and it’s tremendous fun. Wallace is these days very unfashionable indeed, something that I find quite mysterious. His thrillers are always entertaining and colourful and he is surely ripe for rediscovery. The Yellow Snake is a total hoot.

Room 13, by Edgar Wallace

With Room 13 in 1924 Edgar Wallace introduced readers to Mr J. G. Reeder, one of the least glamorous of all fictional detectives.

Mr J. G. Reeder is neither a police detective nor an amateur crime-fighter, nor is he a private detective. In fact he’s employed by the Bank of England, and acts as a kind of consultant to Scotland Yard. He’s a shabby rather timid little man in his 60s, and even the thought of handling firearms appalls him. He’s hesitant and vague in manner and sees slightly dotty. He also has one of the sharpest brains in the country and an encyclopedic knowledge of criminals and crime. British prisons contain many wrong-doers who made the mistake of not taking Mr J. G. Reeder seriously.

There are in fact two heroes in this book, the other being a certain Captain Johnny Gray. Johnny is a gentleman, and he’s also a criminal. He’s serving a sentence at Dartmoor Prison for some rather shady dealings on the racetrack. He keeps going by thinking of the girl he hopes to marry. She’s the daughter of retired bank robber Peter Kane, although she has no idea of her father’s villainous past. Johnny is devastated when he received the news that the lovely Marney is to marry a Canadian officer, and even more upset when upon his release from prison he discovers that this Canadian officer is neither an officer, nor a gentleman, nor a Canadian.

There is a dastardly plot afoot, and it involves both a vast counterfeiting ring and an old criminal’s quest for revenge on the man he believes betrayed him to the police many years earlier.

Edgar Wallace is a curious figure in the history of crime fiction. His first novel was published in 1905 so he’s chronologically intermediate between the classic Victorian and Edwardian detective fiction of Conan Doyle and his imitators on the one hand and the “golden age” crime writers of the 20s and 30s but his work doesn’t feel like either. Wallace is at the more pulpy end of the spectrum so far as British crime writing is concerned, closer to the two-fisted action of the Sexton Blake stories than to the intellectual pleasures of Sherlock Holmes.

Wallace also in some ways anticipates the American hardboiled school. Wallace immerses the reader in the twilight world of the criminal, he delights in the criminal jargon, and he revels in the sordidness and violence of the underworld. There’s also a relatively sympathetic treatment of at least some of the criminals and Wallace is not obsessive about ensuring that every lawbreaker ends up behind bars.

Most all though Wallace is always an entertaining writer and in Mr J. G. Reeder he has created a memorable and rather likeable crime-solver.

The Wordsworth Editions paperback The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder includes two novels and a collection of short stories all featuring the mild-mannered but shrewd Mr Reeder.

Edgar Wallace’s The Twister

Edgar Wallace’s The Twister, published in 1928, is a tale of murder, high finance, and intrigue.

A plot to manipulate the international diamond market forms the background, with a sinister mad scientist and a crooked stock broker battling it out with a man known as The Twister. The Twister, Tony Braid, has a reputation for ruthlessness in both the diamond business and on the racetrack (he’s the owner of a rather successful racing stable). Despite his reputation, he’s actually scrupulously honest. That’s how he manages to get the better of people – nobody in the worlds of racing or finance expects honesty, so they always make the mistake of assuming he’s as shady as they are!

Also involved in the story is the lovely Lady Ursula Frensham, whose father has been a spectacular failure on the Stock Exchange and has brought himself to financial ruin.

It’s not really a murder mystery, since there’s really no mystery at all as to the identity of the murderer, in fact Wallace makes no attempt to conceal the killer’s identity. It is, however, a highly entertaining little thriller. The characters are broadly drawn but vivid, the plot movers along at a breakneck pace, and it’s rather luridly sensationalistic for its era.

It’s also very pulpy in style, but it doesn’t pretend to be anything else, and that pulpiness actually adds to its charm. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable romp.