Ebooki kryminalne i sensacyjne

When I was fourteen, we moved to London with my father. He became an agent on Wood Street, City, representing a large silk maker in Lyon. At the age of twenty, I worked in an office with dusty books and a large armchair that I did not really like. I was always interested in mechanics, but my father did not perceive her as a profession and wanted me to walk in his footsteps.

I sometimes despair of the country ever becoming alive to the danger of the unpreparedness of our present position until too late to prevent some fatal catastrophe. This was the keynote of a solemn warning made in the House of Lords by Earl Roberts. His lordship, whilst drawing attention to our present inadequate forces, strongly urged that action should be taken in accordance with the recommendations of the Elgin Commission that „no military system could be considered sati...

In this story I have dealt with an extraordinary phase of modern life in London, which to the majority will come as a startling revelation. Some will, perhaps, declare that no such amazing state of things exists in this, the most enlightened age the world has known. To such, I can only assert that in this decadent civilisation of ours the things which I have described actually take place in secret, as certain facts in my possession indisputably show.

Being some Curious Records concerning the Craft and Cunning of Theodore Drost, an enemy alien in London, together with certain Revelations regarding his daughter Ella The pair had been discussing certain schemes to the detriment of the English: schemes which, in the main, depended upon the crafty old Drost’s expert knowledge of high-explosives.

Our hero, Richard Scarsmere, befriends an individual (Omar) at an English boarding school who turns out to be an African prince from a kingdom called Mo. Omar receives a visit from one of his mother’s trusted advisers. His mother, the Great White Queen, seeks him to return home immediately. Omar convinces Scarsmere to return to Africa with him since there is little opportunity awaiting him in London. What follows is a tale of deceit, treachery, barbarity, and mystery....

Warm, brilliant, and cloudless was the July noon. Beneath the summer sun the broad, shallow waters of the Meuse sparkled as they rippled swiftly onward through the deep, winding valley of grey rocks and cool woods on their way from the mountains of Lorraine, through peaceful, prosperous Belgium, towards the sea.

To allow so young and delicate a girl to tramp England aimlessly in search of some vague and secret information which seemed to be her erratic father’s object, was, we decided, an utter impossibility; therefore, following that night of our first meeting at Helpstone, Burton and his daughter remained our guests for a week, and, after many consultations and some little economies, we were at last successful in placing Mabel at school, a service for which we later received her ...

„It is imperative that active steps must be taken to preserve England’s supremacy, and at the same time frustrate this aggressive policy towards us which is undoubtedly growing. I need not tell you that the outlook is far from reassuring. As a diplomatist you know that as well as I do. The war-cloud which rose over Europe at the end of the last Administration is still darkening. It therefore behoves us to avoid a repetition of the recent fiasco at St. Petersburg with regard...

An interesting classic mystery, yes, I guess I could say enjoyable but to a certain extent... At first you are dragged to the edge of your seat wondering whats going to happen next or what the hell does this unusual introduction mean, then you’re hit with a bunch of senarios that keep you wanting to just continue to the next chapter to see what will happen, then you realise that some of what you may have suspected in the beginning IS the conclusion to the plot...

Frank Burgoyne, newly rich through inheritance, falls madly and improbably in love with a beautiful but mysterious Russian and becomes unwittingly and unknowingly embroiled in an international plot punctuated by a series of murders. Burgoyne suffers several bewildering experiences, including incarcerations in Russia and England, and he is constantly questioning his love’s motivations and fealty.

Then it’s an entire mystery? „Yes, Phrida.” „But it’s astounding! It really seems so utterly impossible,” declared my well-beloved, amazed at what I had just related. „I’ve simply stated hard facts.” „But there’s been nothing about this affair in the papers.” „For certain reasons the authorities are not exactly anxious for any publicity. It is a very puzzling problem, and they do not care to own themselves baffled,” I replied.

A large, square wooden veranda covered by a red and white awning, above a wide silent sweep of flowing river, whose huge rocks, worn smooth through a thousand ages, raised their backs about the stream, a glimpse of green feathery palms and flaming scarlet poinsettias on the island opposite, and beyond the great drab desert, the illimitable waste of stony, undulating sands stretching away to the infinite, and bathed in the blood-red light of the dying day.

Let me gaze down the vista of the tristful past. Ah! there are things that cannot be uttered; there are scenes that still entrance me, and incidents so unexpected and terrible that they cause me even now to hold my breath in horror. The prologue of this extraordinary drama of London life was enacted three years ago; its astounding dénouement occurred quite recently.

The Ambassador’s office was indeed a very thankless one, while my own position as second secretary of the Paris Embassy was a post not to be envied, even though it is popularly supposed to be one of the plums of the diplomatic service. With Paris full of spies endeavouring to discover our secrets and divine our instructions from Downing Street, and the cabinet noir ever at work upon our correspondence, it behoved us to be always on the alert, and to have resort to all manne...

”Of course the transaction is a purely private one. There is, I suppose, no chance of the truth leaking out? If so, it might be very awkward, you know.” „None whatever. Your Excellency may rely upon me to deal with these people cautiously. Besides, they have their own reputation to consider–as well as ours.” „And how much do you say they offer? „ asked His Excellency in Italian, so that the English servants, if they were listening, should not understand. „If you accept thei...

”Yes! I’m not mistaken at all! It’s the same woman! „ whispered the tall, good-looking young Englishman in a well-cut navy suit as he stood with his friend, a man some ten years older than himself, at one of the roulette tables at Monte Carlo, the first on the right on entering the room–that one known to habitual gamblers as „The Suicide’s Table.” „Are you quite certain? „ asked his friend. „Positive. I should know her again anywhere.” „She’s very handsome. And look, too, b...

So strange, indeed, were all the circumstances, and so startling the adventures that befell me in my search after truth, that until to-day I have hesitated to relate the narrative, which is as extraordinary as it is unique in the history of any living man. If it were not for the fact that a certain person actively associated with this curious drama of our latter day civilisation, has recently passed to the land that lies beyond the human ken, my lips would have perforce sti...

W tym celu mężczyźni zapraszają do miasta Oksanę Spielstein – młodą Żydówkę z Niemiec, rzekomo posiadającą zdolności nawiązywania kontaktu ze zmarłymi. Przyjazd dziewczyny zbiega się z okrutnym morderstwem, którego zagadkę bohaterowie zamierzają rozwiązać z pomocą spirytystki.Obraz Krakowa zawarty w powieści oparty jest na materiałach źródłowych z epoki. Jednym z wydarzeń historycznych, które wiąże się z akcją książki, są prace archeologiczne prowadzone przy kopcu Krakusa w 1...

A short but interesting detective story. Dick Martin plans for an early retirement from the police force seeking a quite life. His final job is to bring in Lew Pheeney, wanted in connection with a bank robbery. When Lew confesses to trying to open a dead man’s tomb, however, Martin has a mystery he must unravel. He races to find the connection between an attractive young librarian, a mad scientist and the vanished heir to a vast fortune, as everyone becomes entangled in a w...

The master mystery-story teller presents an omnibus of his spine-chilling stories. „The Edgar Wallace Reader of Mystery and Adventure” is a collection of short stories that include „On the Witney Road”, „The Pick-Up”, „Kid Glove Harry”, and thirteen others. Edgar Wallace was a British novelist, playwright, and journalist who produced popular detective and suspense stories and was in his time „the king” of the modern thriller. Wallace’s literary output – 175 books, 24 plays,...

„The Council of Justice” is the sequel to much-lauded „The Four Just Men”, a novel which caused a sensation way back in 1905 by encouraging readers to guess the mystery ending. The Four Just Men, in this second of Wallace’s ingenious series of thrillers, pit themselves against The Red Hundred, an organization dedicated to international anarchy, led by the charismatic and beautiful assassin, the Woman of Gratz. As always, the avengers’ methods are meticulously planned and ru...

Edgar Wallace’s 1931 novel „The Devil Man” is the mysterious and thrilling story of Charles Pearce, an small, unnerving, musician, gifted but terribly boastful. Pearce is physically repulsive, tiny in stature, but a Samson in strength. Woman can’t resist him, but they don’t know the real Pearce. He is also a burglar. And a murderer. There is a baffling mystery that someone urgently needs to solve... Full of dispense, action and amusing characters, „The Devil Man” constitute...

An Eye for an Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge Against Germans in 1945, which states that some Jews in Eastern Europe took revenge on their former captors while overseeing over 1,000 concentration camps in Poland for German civilians. The book provides details of the imprisonment of 200,000 Germans „many of them starved, beaten and tortured” and estimates that „more than 60,000 died at the hands of a largely Jewish-run security organisation.”

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 ...

1931 Edgar Wallace novel. The story begins with following the Arranway family and various people that touch their life. Sketchley, where the Coat of Arms roadhouse stands, is a place of strange happenings. A complicated trail of theft, arson and blackmail culminates in murder at the Coat of Arms roadhouse and T. B. Collett, the crack Scotland Yard detective, must cope with a cast of stock company suspects and an incompetent local detective. Little by little you can see that...

Edgar Wallace established his reputation as a writer of detective thrillers, a genre in which he wrote more than 170 books, with the publication of „The Four Just Men”. Moreover, the author was a wholehearted supporter of Victorian and early Edwardian values and mores, which are now considered in some respects politically incorrect. In England, in the 1920s, Wallace was said to be the second biggest seller after the Bible. „The Day of Uniting” by Edgar Wallace was originall...

Edgar Wallace’s novels always have an endearing quality about them that is not so easy to define. „Daughters of the Night” is hard to explain in a few words, but there are the usual Edgar Wallace characters: the hero, the heroine, the suspicious but beautiful woman who is somehow involved in the whole plot, the hard-faced and fiendish villain and a chivalrous one. Jim Bartholomew is a young manager of a branch of the South Devon Farmers’ Bank with a love of hunting, horses ...

Fashionable Londoner James Morlake is a gentleman with many secrets and several particularly valuable skills – like terrorizing bankers across the city. His Moorish servant Mahmet has some secrets to hide as well, particularly when his employer gives him the odd task to perform in the dead of night in dark London. A collection of short stories from Edgar Wallace featuring a private detective who tracks down blackmailers. When you do reach the end you will anxiously await a ...

Edgar Wallace is continuing to introduce 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 is employed by the Bank of England, and acts as a kind of consultant to Scotland Yard. This is vintage Wallace, with no great depths but a good deal of humor and plenty of engaging goings-on along Wallace’s beloved Thames. Wallace wa...

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. Born into poverty as an illegitimate London child, joining the army at 21, he was a war correspondent during the Second Boer War for Reuters and The Daily Mail. This early work by Edgar Wallace was originally published in 1923. „The Books of Bart” is a novel of relationships and d...

An excellent crime novel which contains a cunning villain, love, revenge and locked room murder by the master of British thrillers. The hero John Lexman, is a mystery writer, like the author himself, and is married to a lovely woman who hides a secret. The Greek aristocrat, Remington Kara is stunningly handsome and immensely rich and he nurses an unrequited passion for Lexman’s wife. When Lexman gets himself into financial problems with an Albanian moneylender, the plot beg...

In this 1923 mystery by Edgar Wallace, Jesse Trasmere is thrifty and does not trust banks, so he keeps all of his money in his prison-like house. Although his nephew, Rex Lander, receives a generous allowance from his uncle, it is not enough for his extravagant lifestyle. Trasmere breaks with routine and informs his valet, Walters, that he is going out of town for a while to avoid an acquaintance from his past. One day he turns up dead, in a completely locked vault, the onl...

Set in England at the turn of the 20th century, Wallace’s crime novel „The Daffodil Mystery” follows the mysterious circumstances under which shop owner Lyne was found dead in Hyde Park, murdered undoubtedly! The clues were numerous but contradictory... The murdered man is an unsavory character who is called on the carpet by the investigator he tries to hire to frame the girl Odette Rider. Detective Jack Tarling and his trusted Chinese assistant become involved in helping t...

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 Big Four” is a story packed with intrigue, treachery, assassinations, and machinations, and it highlights Wallace’s unmatched skill in setting a pulse-pounding pace. Wallace was an extremely prolific writer who wrote over 175 novels, plus numerous plays, essays and journalist...

The story begins with the murder of Horace Tom Tickler, burglar, who is „taken for a ride” in the best Chicago fashion and then delivered to Scotland Yard in a stolen cab – and all of England will be turned topsy-turvy until the clue of the silver key unmasks the ruthless murderer! Some intriguing twists, and the murderer’s identity is quite well hidden. With a wide range of suspects – miserly rich uncle, heiress-actress, impecunious inventor, theatrical „angel”, inveterate...

A collection of 7 short mystery/romance stories by the great story-teller Wallace which contains the following works: „The Cat Burglar”, „The Pick-Up”, „Discovering Rex”, „The Clue Of Monday’s Settling”, „Establishing Charles Bullivant”, „Sentimental Simpson”, „White Stocking”. „The Cat Burglar” takes place in the British capital. Here we can see family jealousies, intrigues and double games, all because of a mysteriously disappeared emerald. „Sentimental Simpson” is the st...

„The Brigand” (1927) is a collection of a dozen fast-paced, frothy crime capers set in a Britain still reeling from 1926’s General Strike. An excellent collection of connected short stories all about likeable conman Anthony Newton. Newton returning from the Great War and unable to find employment decides start redistributing wealth in his own way. Deprived of a legal source of income and faced with homelessness and hunger he decides to become a brigand – a sort of modern-da...

„The Duke in the Suburbs” was written in the year 1909 by Edgar Wallace. Rich Texas Cowboy with French noble lineage and knowledge of the manners of a Duke and George Hankey, who discovered silver in Los Madges, have moved to the suburbs of London and created a havoc with the neighbors there, the women, former enemies and friends. Duke de Montvillier has to avoid ambushes, avert sinister plots against him, found newspapers and much more. This book is one of the most popular...

„The Dark Eyes Of London” is a crime novel by the British writer Edgar Wallace which was first published in 1924. Inspector Holt and his valet Sunny are planning a visit to Monte Carlo when an urgent telegram arrives from the Chief Commissioner of Scotland Yard. Mr. Gordon Stuart has been found drowned in suspicious circumstances. An unbalanced doctor and his brother murder a series of wealthy men to benefit from their life insurance policies, using a charity for the blind ...

The mysterious Crimson Circle is a high-level protection society: pay them, or you die. Every wealthy man goes in fear of them if he’s smart, and dies if he isn’t. This is a criminal genius who recruits people in trouble, rescues them with help or cash, and puts them to work on robbery, blackmail and murder. At least one man is dead after refusing to pay L100,000. Will there be more bodies? The Circle has many minions, including the mysterious and beautiful Thalia Drummond,...

A really top-notch literary thriller from Edgar Wallace. The story is set in Russia and England around the time of WW1. We follow a 22-year-old man on his first assignment for a Russian-English oil company as he becomes embroiled in intrigue and romance involving a beautiful Grand Duchess, American mobster Cherry Bim, and the influential Israel Kensky and his magical book of „all power”. It is through Hay’s eyes that we see the steady erosion of the existing Russian aristoc...

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born in London, England in 1875. He received his early education at St. Peter’s School and the Board School, but after a frenetic teens involving a rash engagement and frequently changing employment circumstances, Wallace went into the military. He served in the Royal West Kent Regiment in England and then as part of the Medical Staff Corps stationed in South Africa. Over the rest of his life, Wallace produced some 173 books and wrote 17 pl...

An enjoyable Edgar Wallace horse-racing escapade. 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 setting of this mystery/thriller is the horse-racing world. A wealthy racehorse owner is banned from racing when he is double- crossed by the woman he loves. With the help of his butler – an ex-burglar he succeeds in re...

Several employees on a nobleman’s estate show up at a former abbey, reputed to be haunted, to search for a hidden treasure. However, a mysterious hooded figure begins killing off those who may have figured out where the treasure is hidden. Who the Black Abbott is, what his purpose is – and how he is connected with the mystery of the treasure – these are the elements of the story. There’s a malevolent ghost, buried treasure, the elixir of life, a crooked lawyer, a tangled ro...

Conventional ideas of beauty are typically associate it with goodness and kindness. However, appearances can be deceptive. A classic mystery crime novel involving the evil deeds of one Jean Briggerland, a woman with all the outward angelic qualities imaginable but possessing an unspeakable evil nature, so lovely that none can see her guilt – even in connection with the most blatant crimes! Jean uses her criminal connection to climb to the heights of wealth and power, but la...

Over a period of time, men disappear, and later their heads are found. Meanwhile a young actress in a small part in a film on location, is disturbed by the actions of the owner of the place where they are filming. A detective comes to investigate, and finds many puzzling things going on. Several of the characters are suspicious, in one way or another, and as the plot unfolds, it grips you. Edgar Wallace’s „The Avenger” is a perfectly fine example of what a page-turning thri...

The hapless Heine is trying very hard to be a good German spy in Great Britain during WWI but luck and circumstance are not with him. Every adventure turns out poorly for our dear spy. This collection of stories of Edgar Wallace about Heine was published during WWI and should be taken lightly by readers – some may see it as a piece of anti-German propaganda, with Heine as a bit of a hopeless idiot. But the stories are also entertaining and should be read as such. Although t...

Carfew was an erratic genius, with a horror of anything that had the appearance of discipline, order, or conventional method. So it was with some luck that there was a train disaster while he was working in the newspaper office of „The Megaphone”. He was dispatched to the scene and came back triumphant: „The Spaniard is a fake! „ shouted Carfew. He had forgotten all about the railway accident. Shortly thereafter, so would his editor. „The Admirable Carfew” is a collection o...

The hero, the discharged Army Captain Reginald Hex, was the prototype for Anthony Newland, whose adventures were related several years later in The Brigand (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1927). The first two Hex stories were revised and published as Anthony Newland stories in that collection under the titles „Buried Treasure” and „A Contribution to Charity”. The stories are adventurous and well written but definitely a product of their time and place. Edgar Wallace was a ...

Colonial adventures in a 6 volume collection set on the „Dark Continent”. Sanders and Co. return to Africa (following the events in Bones in London) to bring the old Kings country under the Union Jack and to try and find what has happened to a missionary and his daughter. It is written in a delightfully humorous style. „Sandi, the King-maker” among other novels by Edgar Wallace conveys the paternal attitude that England’s officials felt toward the native tribes of Africa. P...

The book is actually a collection of short stories that are loosely tied together by Sanders himself, his steamship and an unlikely African chief called Bosambo. In the jungles of West Africa, Commissioner Sanders is the highest representative of the British crown. The health and safety of a quarter-million natives who speak countless languages and worship untold gods are his responsibility. Whether disciplining a boy king, expelling troublesome missionaries, or fighting to...

The book consists of 10 short stories about Tam a brilliant Scottish pilot, a thriller novel fan, socialist and cigar addict. The stories of Tam the pilot are not mysteries. Tam’s dialogue is written phonetically and he is great fun and saves the rather silly pre-Biggles stories from being too ridiculous to be enjoyable. The characters are broad, the situations light, but the stories are exciting and fun. „Tam” is a real person, and all the adventures set forth have actuall...

Like most of the later ones even though this one is called „Sanders” it very much stars Lieutenant Augustus „Bones” Tibbetts. Employing his unique style of innocent and endearing humor, Bones has written to the newspapers The Surrey Star and The Middlesex Plain Dealer inviting the Foreign Secretary to pay a visit to the African territories which they administer. It is against the regulations and his boss Hamilton is furious. While world powers vie for colonial honors, Sande...

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 is employed by the Bank of England, and acts as a kind of consultant to Scotland Yard. This time Edgar Wallace’s unassuming investigator shares the limelight with a young and vigorous ex-con called John Gray. John Gray, a mode...

„Terror Keep” is a 1927 Edgar Wallace thriller featuring perhaps the most memorable of all Wallace’s heroes, Mr. J. G. Reeder. 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. This time detective and his attractive secretary, Margaret Belman, almost suffered...

This collection of stories from every-day life in the British military, centered around the characters of „Smithy” and „Nobby”. Edgar Wallace, who is also famous for his own stories of colonial life – the Sanders stories – was principally a writer of crime and detective fiction. He was one of the most popular and prolific authors of his era. However, he was well aware that the irrepressible spirit of Kipling’s famous rankers would live on, and he wrote his own tales of ordi...

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. Wallace’s „Sergeant Sir Peter” is a collection of stories about an aristocratic young man who becomes a Police Sergeant. Despite this conceit, this collection is much more realistic about life in Britain than many Golden Age works. The stories deal sympathetically with peo...

An international criminal arrives in London. Basically there’s the typical foreign bad guy, Caesar Valentine, who is suspected of many shady things but Scotland Yard, or any other police department for that matter, can’t pin any crimes on him so they send in an undercover operative only known as Number Six to find out enough to put Valentine away for good. The thing is nobody at Scotland Yard knows who Number Six is and neither does Charles Valentine! Along the way we meet ...

The further escapades of the incorrigible Evans, Edgar Wallace’s? cockney hero of the Turf feature in these twelve tales. The Educated Evans stories combine Wallace’s talent for humor with his hallmark detective story themes. His story of Evans is full of amusing incidents of love and adventure set amidst the bustle and excitement of the racecourse. There are bets, bookmakers, horses, tip-offs, winners, journalists and women. There is banter, humor and much fun to be had al...

Edgar Wallace enjoyed writing science fiction. „Planetoid 127”, first published in 1929 but reprinted as late 1962, is a short story about an Earth scientist who communicates via wireless with his counterpart on a duplicate Earth orbiting unseen because it is on the opposite side of the Sun. The idea of a mirror Earth or mirror Universe later became a standard subgenre within science fiction. The story also bears similarities to Rudyard Kipling’s hard science fiction story ...

„There is a man in London – I guess he is still in London, though I have not had news of him in months – he’ll be useful to you, Penn, if you ever need help.” And so begins this story. It is impossible not to be thrilled by Edgar Wallace. „Penelope of the Polyantha” is a crime novel by this pioneer of detective fiction. One of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, Edgar Wallace was an immensely popular author, who created exciting thrillers spiced with tales o...

Edgar Wallace was a prolific author of crime, adventure and humorous stories, whose best known creations include „The Four Just Men”, „Sanders of the River”, and „J. G. Reeder”. In this work, the spies from Japan conspire to steal the Channing „preparedness” fortune and invade the United States, beginning in New York, then allying themselves with Mexicans across the border. They are stopped by the efforts of munitions factory heiress Patria Channing and U.S. Secret Service ...

This unique thriller collection contains the 24 short vintage crime stories – a complete series featuring Police Constable Lee of the London „D” Division, written by the great Edgar Wallace. P.-C. Lee is a typical Wallace character, full of wit and charm. A number of these were reprinted in Ideas in 1928-1929 and in other magazines. Nine of the P.-C. Lee stories were later included in the 1961 collection „The Undisclosed Client and Other Stories”. Written by prolific writer...

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...

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...

A collection of 23 stories from every-day life in the British military, centered around the characters of „Smithy” and „Nobby”. Edgar Wallace, who is also famous for his own stories of colonial life – the Sanders stories – was principally a writer of crime and detective fiction. However, he was well aware that the irrepressible spirit of Kipling’s famous rankers would live on, and he wrote his own tales of ordinary British soldiers. Set at a later-and, when first published,...

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was a prolific British crime writer, journalist and playwright, who wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and countless articles in newspapers and journals. Over 160 films have been made of his novels, more than any other author. In the 1920s, one of Wallace’s publishers claimed that a quarter of all books read in England were written by him. Silinski is one of Edgar Wallace’s more over-the-top master fiends. He could teach Goldman Sachs and ...

Between 1904 and 1918 Edgar Wallace wrote a large number of mostly humorous sketches about life in the British Army relating the escapades and adventures of privates Smith (Smithy), Nobby Clark, Spud Murphy and their comrades-in-arms. Set at a later-and, when first published, contemporary time, and on a different stage, this substantial collection of the Smithy stories finds our incorrigible hero and his scurrilous band of confederates malingering, scheming and conniving th...

Edgar Wallace’s humorous tales of British Army life, centered around the characters of „Smithy” and „Nobby”. The stories, collected in 1905, are supposed to tell us about the every-day life of the soldiers and are supposed to be, in turns, funny, moving, or even sometimes tragic. This substantial collection of the Smithy stories finds our incorrigible hero and his scurrilous band of confederates malingering, scheming and conniving their way through life in the British Army ...

Further collection of 24 war-time short stories about Smithy, the soldier and his comrades Nobby and Spud in the British army before WWI. This is the second anthology in Wallace’s „Smithy” series in which the famous character T. B. Smith makes his appearance. Also Smithy’s pal „Nobby” Clark has now emerged very much as the main character in these, usually humorous stories of pre world war one British army life. These stories are more clearly set in the Boer war. While the f...