Edgar Wallace
Reporting, fiction and entertainment
Edgar Wallace was born in Greenwich in 1875. He served in the army in South Africa before becoming a correspondent for Reuters and the Daily Mail. Journalism brought him into contact with war reporting, crime and the competitive business of securing a story. He also edited newspapers. The Four Just Men appeared in 1905, near the beginning of the career that made his name particularly familiar to readers of thrillers.
Wallace’s output extended to plays and stories involving fantastic or speculative ideas, as well as the criminal plots for which he is best remembered. The Sanders of the River books drew on an imperial view of Africa whose racial assumptions remain part of their historical context. His last period took him to Hollywood, where he worked on material associated with King Kong; the extent of that contribution should not be confused with authorship of the finished film. He died there in 1932.
Suspense through competing explanations
A Wallace scene often presents an action before supplying the network of interests behind it. An apparently ordinary exchange about money, employment or an appointment can acquire a second significance when another character enters. The pace depends on these changes of context as much as on physical pursuit or danger.
Social roles help make concealment possible. An aristocratic title, a servant’s position or an official manner creates expectations that a character may exploit. The reader’s task is to notice what each role permits someone to learn, hide or demand, without treating the first social impression as a reliable measure of power.
Three routes into uncertainty
The Black Abbot opens at Fossaway Manor, where discussion of a supposed haunting collides with Lord Chelford’s efforts to suppress it. The early circulation of gossip and a newspaper report makes belief itself an active force in the household. The Strange Countess instead draws Lois Reddle into an unfamiliar social environment through secretarial employment. In both novels, access to a household also means exposure to relationships that are not immediately legible.
Terror Keep brings the investigator J. G. Reeder into a story shadowed by the criminal John Flack. Its opening attention to Flack’s organised knowledge of crime offers a counterweight to the detective’s powers of interpretation. These different premises show how Wallace can move suspense between a place, a vulnerable entrant into a household and an anticipated contest of intelligence.
Keeping track of what changes
At the end of a short chapter, identify the new fact that changes the situation. Then ask whether it changes what happened, what a character believes or only what the reader has been allowed to know. Those are different kinds of movement, and Wallace’s speed can make their distinction easy to miss.
Keep a small mental map of employment, money and personal obligation. Such links often explain why a character can enter a room or secure another person’s attention. Allow the mysteries to unfold before deciding which appearances are deceptive; the early scenes are designed to support provisional readings that later information can revise.