The Angel of Terror - Edgar Wallace

Over the past few days, I’ve been discussing various aspects of British thriller fiction with a friend of mine, which made me think about the fact that I’d never read anything by Edgar Wallace, despite being aware of his work for at least 50 years. Since I have several e-book editions of his novels, I decided to remedy that and picked one at random to read: THE ANGEL OF TERROR, originally published in 1922.

Set in London and on the French Riviera, this is the story of a beautiful young heiress, the lawyer who wants to protect her, the retired British soldier hired to be her bodyguard, and the despicable villains who want to murder her so they can inherit a fortune. Plus a few assorted con artists and an escaped lunatic.

This isn’t a mystery at all; the reader is fully aware the whole time of who the villains are and is privy to all their sinister plans, which get really sinister at times, including a plot to infect the poor girl with smallpox. Despite the grisly nature of some of the goings-on, the writing is, for the most part, fairly genteel and restrained. Thankfully, there are a few welcome moments of blood and thunder.

My reaction to this one was really mixed. A lot is going on, and the book is well-paced. There’s a nice sense of “one damned thing after another”. The dialogue is top-notch. The villains are thoroughly evil, the hero stalwart.

But the heiress is annoyingly dense, even for 1922. Even though there’s no real mystery, there is a big plot twist near the end, but unfortunately, it was obvious as soon as Wallace laid the groundwork for it early on. And the ending is, well, pretty unsatisfying, to the point that I looked at the Kindle and said, “Wait. What?”

All that said, I actually did enjoy the book and found myself wanting to get back to it to find out what was going to happen. There’s something to be said for sheer storytelling ability, and Wallace seems to have had it. I have no idea how THE ANGEL OF TERROR is regarded among his body of work, but I liked it enough that I want to read more. I hope whichever book I try next will be a little better, though.

Since I read an e-book version, I looked online for a cover scan. The one above is the best I found. Most were pretty sedate or didn’t fit the book at all.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Amazing Detective Stories, February 1931

Nice cover by Donald Hewitt on this cover of a fairly obscure pulp, and a great line-up of authors inside: Erle Stanley Gardner, H. Bedford-Jones, Arthur J. Burks, and Edgar Wallace.

More Edgar Wallace (and Keith Chapman)

Again courtesy of Keith Chapman, here's a photo of the young editor showing cover mock-ups from EDGAR WALLACE MYSTERY MAGAZINE to Wallace's children in 1964. Keith's holding the cover of the first issue, as seen in the previous post, in his left hand. A bit of publishing history for a Monday.

Monday Morning Digest Magazine: Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine, August 1964 (Vol. 1, Number 1)

Is this the start of a new series here on the ol' blog? Well, maybe, maybe not. There are a lot of great digest covers we can look at. I was just thinking that I might start blogging a little less next year in an attempt to simplify my life, but then Keith Chapman, aka Chap O'Keefe, sends me a cover scan of the first issue of EDGAR WALLACE MYSTERY MAGAZINE, which came up in the comments on yesterday's post, and . . . well, there you go. It's a good cover, reminiscent of ones I've seen on MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Again, I don't recognize any of the authors' names except Edgar Wallace. Thanks for sending this along, Keith.