„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 ...

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 ...

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...

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...

Forged notes have started to appear everywhere. Mr. Cheyne Wells of Harley Street has been given one. So has Porter. Peter Clifton is rich, but no one is quite certain how he acquired his money – not even his new wife, the beautiful Jane Leith. Jane, newly married to this man she does not love, is plunged into a nightmare of murder and madness. What is the secret of her husband’s immense fortune? Is he „The Clever One” who has baffled the police, the banks and the world wit...

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 ...

„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...

Edgar Wallace’s „The Twister”, published in 1928, is a tale of murder, high finance, and intrigue. Lord Frensham knows exactly who’s swindling him in the stock market – Anthony „Tony” Braid, who many call The Twister. And he’s not about to believe Braid’s crazy notion that his own nephew, his flesh and blood, is behind the embezzlement... Then Frensham is found dead in his office, but Inspector Elk of the Scotland Yard knows it’s not suicide, no matter the elaborate scheme ...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...