Edgar Wallace
19 books
- Pure vintage thriller stuff: Eunice takes a job in the Groat house and starts finding a blue hand stamped as a warning wherever danger's closing in, while Jim Steele hunts a missing heiress. Melodramatic, fast, a bit creaky, and honestly fun if you let it be.
- Wallace at his breeziest here: Kate runs a whole gang of hardened crooks by being smarter than everyone in the room, and watching Scotland Yard's Michael Pretherston fall for the woman he's meant to catch is half the fun. Light, fast, cheerfully implausible, and it knows it.
- If you like your thrillers fast and a bit pulpy, this delivers: Johnny Gray walks out of Dartmoor into a mess of forgers, a crooked marriage, and a locked club room, while the mild, umbrella-carrying Mr. Reeder quietly turns out to be nobody's fool. Pure 1920s fun, not deep.
- Mr. Reeder is the fun here, a fussy, apologetic little man with an umbrella who quietly out-thinks a mad criminal escaped from Broadmoor, and the creepy cliffside hotel with its hidden passages is pure pulp pleasure. Fast, silly in spots, and genuinely tense when it counts.
- Pure 1920s pulp, and it knows it: a killer mailing severed heads to Scotland Yard, a detective undercover at a film studio, and a sinister baronet with a pet orangutan called Bhag. Silly in places, but Wallace keeps things moving, and it's a fun rainy afternoon.
- A miser dies inside a vault locked from within, the only key lying on the table beside him. Wallace runs the puzzle at his usual headlong pace; pulp, frankly, but honest pulp with a genuinely neat solution.
- A fast, pulpy locked-room puzzle from 1916, and the villain Kara is genuinely nasty in a way that still lands. T.X.
- If you liked The Four Just Men, this is more of the same swagger, the vigilantes now squaring off against a whole anarchist network and the Woman of Gratz, with Manfred coolly facing trial near the end. Pure Edwardian pulp, fast and cheerfully implausible.
- If you're in the mood for pure between-the-wars pulp, this moves fast: a blackmail syndicate killing off rich men, a showy psychic detective, and dumpy Inspector Parr, whom everyone underestimates. Thalia Drummond alone, apparently crooked and never quite readable, makes the guessing game worth it.
- Pure 1920s pulp, and it knows it: a locked tomb, scattered keys, and Dr. Stalletti, one of Wallace's genuinely creepy villains, doing unspeakable things in a dark house. Read it fast on a rainy night and don't ask the plot to hold up in daylight.
- You get a brisk, slightly theatrical Edwardian thriller built around four wealthy vigilantes, especially the unnervingly composed George Manfred, who challenge a British minister with an ingenious threat. It’s more clever than psychologically deep, but the cat-and-mouse machinery still has a pleasingly nasty snap.
- If you like your justice extralegal and your villains genuinely nasty, this delivers: Colonel Black is a crooked financier who dabbles in poison, and the Just Men circle him with polite little warning notes. Pure pulp, fast and cheerfully amoral, best read in one sitting.
- Quick, brisk vigilante stories, the three friends quietly ruining blackmailers and poisoners the courts can't reach, with Leon Gonsalez happily lecturing on the shape of a criminal's ears while planning something ruthless. If you like your justice tidy and a bit wicked, an evening well spent.
- Fair warning, this is pulpy Edgar Wallace, written fast and paced faster, so don't expect deep characters. But Saul Arthur Mann, the fussy little man with a filing system that seems to hold everyone's secrets, is fun, and the murder plot twists gamely enough for a rainy afternoon.
- If you like your thrillers pulpy and Edwardian, this moves fast: a man convinced he's marked for death (a certain tune keeps turning up before people in his family die) quietly turns to crime to provide for his wife. Melodramatic, yes, but Wallace keeps it brisk and oddly touching.
- You’ll enjoy watching the mild, fussy Mr. J. G. Reeder quietly outthink professional criminals, often by noticing the detail everyone else dismisses. It’s brisk, old-fashioned detective fiction, more interested in cunning than atmosphere, and Reeder’s oddly gentle manner makes his deductions feel pleasantly sly rather than showy.
- Pure pulp, and it knows it: a scandal rag run by an editor nobody's ever seen, a blackmailer, and a country house rigged with hidden lifts and electric traps. If you want a fast, silly evening with Scotland Yard's T.B.
- A brisk 1920s thriller where the detective is Leslie Maughan, a sharp young woman at Scotland Yard who out-thinks everyone around her. Wallace piles on foggy London, blackmail, a very odd butler, and it moves fast; just don't expect deep character studies, it's pure momentum.
- Pure 1920s pulp, and it knows it: Leon Gonsalez driving too fast and theorizing about criminal skulls while men drop dead in London from what looks like snakebite. If you want a villain like Dr. Oberzohn, gleefully sinister and slightly absurd, this is a fun evening, not literature.