If you like a villain to be a proper villain then Oberzhon is the genuine article. What a villain! What an adventure! There are crimes for which no punishment is adequate, offences that the written law cannot efface. When conventional justice fails The Three Just Men employ their great intellect and cunning. They use their own methods, carry out their own verdicts which the police were unable or unwilling to carry out. There can be no compromise. Each of the ten chapters in...
„The Squeaker” is a piece of early crime writing by author Edgar Wallace, first published in 1927. This novel is a traditional mystery, featuring some crooks and some policemen, a mysterious villain, a lovely girl and a plot with many twists. It is the thrilling story of a group of London jewel thieves and the company they keep. The title character is an omnipotent „fence” who has cornered the diamond-smuggling racket. The fence travels in polite society under the guise of ...
„The Undisclosed Client” is a collection of short stories published between 1904 and 1929 from the British Mysteries’ master Edgar Wallace, directly from the Golden Era of the genre. Edgar Wallace was an English novelist, journalist and playwright, who was an enormously popular writer of detective, suspense stories, and practically invented the modern „thriller”. His popularity at the time was comparable to that of Charles Dickens. The stories are fast-paced, with good twis...
In 1919-1920 Edgar Wallace wrote a series of ten short stories featuring the investigative reporter York Symon for publication in the British monthly „The Novel Magazine”. In 1928 the series was reprinted in „Pearson’s Weekly”. In the following year Edgar Wallace collected nine of the stories in a book entitled „The Reporter”. „The Reporter” is a detective story about a police reporter named „Wise” Symon and his tricks of the trade. A collection presents 9 short stories tha...
Eine Serie von Verbrechen macht London unsicher. Seit Jahren versetzt der unheimlich maskierte Chef einer Verbrecherbande, der sogenannte „Frosch mit der Maske”, London in Angst und Schrecken. An der Spitze der berüchtigten Bande, deren Mitglieder alle dieselbe Tätowierung tragen, steht der unbekannte und schwer fassbare Frosch. Als der zuständige Undercover-Polizist tot aufgefunden wird, übernimmt Sergeant Elk den Fall. Weder Inspektor Elk noch seinem Assistenten Sergeant ...
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was an English crime writer, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright, who wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and numerous articles in newspapers and journals. One of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, Edgar Wallace was an immensely popular author, who created exciting thrillers spiced with tales of treacherous crooks and hard-boiled detectives. He was known for the „The Four Just Men”, the „Ringer”, and for crea...
Set in Chicago, and written in 1931 by Edgar Wallace, „On the Spot” truly reflects the horror of gang life in Prohibition Chicago. Tony Perelli, the gang boss, recruits men for his gang and women for his bed with the same ruthlessness – and rapidly arranges for their disposal when they become a nuisance. But Minn Lee, the half-Chinese widow, is a little too much for him, and as she gradually learns the extent of his treachery, she plans a revenge... The constant threat of d...
„Mr. Justice Maxell” follows the story of two business partners, Maxell and Cartwright, one of whom becomes a judge and sentences the other to prison, the woman they both marry, and their respective cousins whom they take on as their own wards. Spanning roughly a decade, the plot hinges on multiple coincidences involving mutual acquaintances meeting one another at critical points on different continents, and maintains much of its suspense by instilling most of its main char...
„Major Haynes of the Secret Service” is a fine series of Wallace stories about wartime espionage. During the First World War Edgar Wallace wrote a number of morale-boosting tales about the skill and derring-do of the British military and intelligence services, mostly in the form of series published under such titles as „Tam o’ the Scoots,” „Companions of the Ace High,” and „Clarence-Private”. Several series were published in the form of dramatic pseudo-documentary accounts ...
This is the story of a young female criminal mastermind who leads a gang in a series of exceptionally daring and very profitable robberies but works as secretary to keep her cover story intact. When she picks up information from her boss, an aristocrat, the police soon suspect her of wrongdoing. But she meets a handsome police officer who very much against her will softens her hearts. She and the gang become alienated from one another. Naturally she just has something in he...
During and after the First World War, Edgar Wallace wrote several story and article series for the Glasgow Sunday Post, a weekly newspaper founded in 1915 by the Scottish shipping and media magnate David Couper Thomson. Some of these series were published under Wallace’s own name, others – including the present work – under the house-author name of „John Anstruther”. The story „The Elusive Dud” is fast-paced with some surprising twists, well written and great to read. Walla...
One of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, Edgar Wallace was an immensely popular author, who created exciting thrillers spiced with tales of treacherous crooks and hard-boiled detectives. „The Double” is a story about a man who encounters his unknown double and the trouble that arises. When Dick Staines joined the police force the big case of the day had been the Staines murder. The only clue was an unknown thumb-print, the case was never solved. Ten years ...
J. G. Reeder is a shabby little man with red hair and weak eyes. However, his extraordinary mind is rapier sharp. „Red Aces” is the fourth and last of Edgar Wallace’s JG Reeder books, featuring the diffident sleuth with the furled umbrella in three novelette-length adventures. Here are three thrilling episodes torn from his casebook: „Red Aces” about a man who gambles high and lives in fear; „Kennedy the Con Man”, reveals the impeccable mask stripped from a fiend, and final...
As a prophecy of modern warfare, this book, written before the Great War, is distinctly remarkable, as well as having the genuine Edgar Wallace sense of thrilling narrative. The centre of the plot is the invasion of Britain in 1909. It could be a crime story, as it opens in the mean streets of working class Deptford in the opening years of the 20th century, and includes criminals petty and not so petty. It is also a war story, and includes a balloon air raid over London; an...
Lew Daney, chief suspect in a jewel robbery and an ensuing murder, vanishes leaving no trace. Once he saved Mary Grier from a knife attack by a madman. Mary Grier now works at Clench House in Scotland as secretary to the miserly Mr. Arkwright, and Mr. Arkwright’s nephew and heir is „"Tiger"” Tim Jordan, an ex-Colonial police officer now holidaying in England and seeking work with Scotland Yard. Jordan doesn’t get much of a holiday but he does get the job, after proving his ...
Edgar Wallace, author of „The Lone House Mystery”, was a celebrated British author in the early twentieth century. Over 160 of his novels have been made into films, and he is known especially for his part in writing the story for the movie „King Kong”. The dead man was rich. In life he lived in a lonely house by a river. In the earth outside it is the imprint of a bare foot. His secretary, with whom he was having an affair, is locked in a room. The key is in the dead man’s ...
Best remembered for penning the screenplay for the classic film „King Kong”, author Edgar Wallace was an astoundingly popular luminary in the action-adventure genre in the early twentieth century. „The Ghost of Down Hill” is an entertaining mystery novella, based on the idea that a ghost of a monk haunts a house built on top of former holy ground. This novella has upbeat tone and surprising outcome. „The Queen of Sheba’s Belt” features the disappearance of a priceless belt ...
Four-Square Jane is a daring and successful crook, created by the pen of Edgar Wallace, a famous British author of mystery genre. Her resourcefulness is boundless and she employs outstanding cunning to get away with a series of risky crimes performed with admirable cleverness, which cannot but evoke admiration. „Four-Square Jane” is not even a typical love story though there is a marriage in it. Often the women in this era detective novel start out strong but end up falling...
Another rip-roaring tale from Edgar Wallace, „The Green Archer” features a beautiful girl looking for the mother from whom she was stolen as a baby, her kindly foster-father, a redheaded journalist, a very secret policeman who is also a master of disguise, an Anglo-Indian petty criminal and his wife, assorted villains and, at the center of it all, Abel Bellamy, a very ugly, very rich man who’s bought a Garres Castle in Scotland. Running through it all is the mysterious Gree...
„The India-Rubber Men” is a gripping thriller of London’s River Police, whose swift launches patrol the Thames and guard the ships that lie in port. Inspector John Wade is given the toughest job of his life when he is assigned the task of running to earth a gang of gunmen in rubber gas-masks, rubber gloves and crepe rubber shoes, who rob banks and jewelers, and even commit murder under the very eyes of the police, and get away with it. Through it all runs the Thames, and th...
Fifth book in the J.G. Reeder series. When Larry O’Ryan decides to become a burglar he attends night school to study ballistics, then secures a job at a safe-maker’s. After three successful robberies Larry is caught by Mr. J. G. Reeder. An unlikely friendship develops and on Saturdays they can be seen together at the British Museum or the Tower. One day Larry rescues Miss Lane Leonard, daughter of a millionaire. The disappearance of one and a half million pounds in gold bul...
„Angel Esquire” (1919) is a great crime story by one of the masters of the genre. This novella revolves around the hunt for an inheritance, or rather the word to unlock the safe where the inheritance is safely stored. A nasty old millionaire dies, leaving clues to the combination of his safe where all his fortune is hidden, to several people, and the race is on! Will the beautiful innocent young girl whose father was swindled by the millionaire get to it first? Or will the ...
Seventeen short stories featuring that master of disguise, Henry Arthur Milton, known as „The Ringer”. An exiting page-tuner full of intrigue and mystery, „Again the Ringer” is a must-read for all fans of thrilling crime fiction. Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875 – 1932) was a prolific English writer. During his lifetime, he wrote 18 stage plays, 957 short stories, numerous articles in newspapers and journals and over 160 films have been made of his novels. He was an imme...
This collection of episodes in the Commissioner Sanders series continues Wallace’s subtly humorous look at colonial Africa. In „Bones”, Wallace spins an engaging yarn about the adventures of an intrepid lieutenant as he travels through Africa on a series of life-or-death missions. When Commissioner Sanders goes on leave, the trusty Lieutenant Hamilton takes over administration of the African territories. However, yet again, the trouble-prone Francis Augustus Tibbetts, known...