Martin Edwards - The Terror

This tale of a white-masked villain who terrorises London boasts a neat ‘least likely person’ twist, and also some snappy snatches of dialogue, as when a detective opines: ‘Policemen and reporters get their living out of other people’s misfortunes.’ Another police officer expresses the view: ‘The jury is a body or institution which gives everybody the benefit of the doubt except the police.’ A later passage, which has something of a timeless quality, notes: ‘Parliament had been playing too interfering a part in the police force lately…The Home Office had issued new instructions which, if they were faithfully carried out, would prevent the police from asking vital questions. Every step that the crank and the busybody could devise to interfere with the administration of justice had assumed official shape.’

Wallace never pretended to be a literary stylist, but the energy of his writing and the slickness of his plot twists earned him countless readers. At one time, his publishers claimed that he was responsible for one in every four British novels read. If this was an exaggeration, it did at least have the merit of seeming plausible. A Detective Story Club advertisement for The Terror said the tale proved once again ‘that there are many imitators, but only one Edgar Wallace’. This was perfectly true. Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875–1932) was extraordinary among authors in that his life was as extraordinary as his books. He was one of a kind, and the latest biography, written by Neil Clark and published in 2014, is called fittingly Stranger than Fiction .

Wallace’s work had a universal appeal. As Clark says, ‘Among his millions of fans were King George V…Stanley Baldwin, a president of the United States, and a certain Adolf Hitler.’ Writing in 1969, Penelope Wallace, his daughter, suggested that an underlying reason for his popularity was ‘his lack of bitterness’:

‘There are occasions when he is angry, particularly on such subjects as “baby farming” but none where hatred…obscures the text. His villains are usually English and on the rare occasions when they are not home-grown they are imported impartially…There is no trace of racial or religious prejudice and it is rare for the villain to be completely bad. Those who say that his characters are either black or white can never have read his books. Few of his bad men are disallowed a redeeming feature or two.’

Reading tastes fluctuate as time passes, and the world has changed a great deal since Wallace adapted The Terror and White Face from his plays. Fortunately, good story-telling never goes completely out of fashion. Edgar Wallace was a gifted story-teller, and it is a pleasure to introduce these two lively tales to a new generation of readers.

MARTIN EDWARDS

May 2015

www.martinedwardsbooks.com

POST-WAR fiction has produced hundreds of clever detective novels and not a few really first-class writers, but there is only one Edgar Wallace. His supremacy we feel sure cannot be challenged. His name has become a household word throughout the English-speaking world, and many of his ‘thrillers’ have already found their way in translations into the libraries of every country in Europe.

While we make a superlative statement about the man without any fear of criticism, we hesitate to say which of the novels of his very prolific pen is the best! Perhaps, taking popularity as a guide, we may put The Terror in the place of honour. This wonderful story has thrilled the London theatre world in its dramatised form; it has been made into a super film, which was one of the first ‘talkies’ shown to the public, and which will long be pronounced one of the best, and now in book form the Detective Story Club presents it to the world.

The Terror is a masterpiece of its kind, and the Edgar Wallace enthusiast will delight in tracing a hundred and one clever devices from subtleties in plot to fine consistency in the characters. The plot speaks for itself, but as an example of a cleverly drawn character take Soapy Marks, a man of secondary importance in the story. In the opening scene we see him chided by his confederate, Connor: (‘Don’t try swank on me, Soapy—use words I can understand’) but this characteristic does not obtrude—in fact, it is only well on in the book that we see Soapy in his true light, spoken of by Scotland Yard as ‘so clever that one of these days we’ll find him in Oxford or Cambridge’. And so with each and every one of the characters.

The atmosphere of terror suggested by the very title of the book is handled with that care which makes real melodrama—a word, by the way, which should not have become degraded in meaning, had all the novels and plays so called been of the Edgar Wallace standard! He never overdoes it. His thrills are relieved by flashes of real humour and the love element introduced with Mary Redmayne and the drunken Ferdie Fane is so slightly suggested that when she admits in the closing chapter, ‘Yes—I—I’m awfully fond of—of Mr Fane,’ we only then realise that the unknown something which gave the story its charm was indeed love!

O’SHEA was in his maddest mood, had been like it all night. Stalking up and down the grassy slope, muttering to himself, waving his hands at some invisible audience, cackling with laughter at his own mysterious jokes; and at dawn he had fallen upon little Lipski, who had dared light a cigarette in defiance of instructions, and had beaten him with savage brutality, and the other two men had not dared interfere.

Joe Connor sprawled on the ground, chewing a blade of grass, and watching with sombre eyes the restless figure. Marks, who sat cross-legged by his side, watched too, but there was a twisted and sneering smile on his thin lips.

‘Mad as a coot,’ said Joe Connor in a low voice. ‘If he pulls this job off without getting us in gaol for the rest of our lives we’ll be lucky.’

Soapy Marks licked his dry lips.

‘He’s cleverest when he’s mad.’ He spoke like a man of culture. Some said that Soapy was intended for the church before a desire for an easier and more illicit method of living made him one of the most skilful, and nearly the most dangerous, gangster in England.

‘Lunacy, my dear fellow, does not mean stupidity. Can’t you stop that fellow blubbering?’

Joe Connor did not rise; he turned his eyes in the direction of the prostrate figure of Lipski, who was groaning and swearing sobbingly.

‘He’ll get over it,’ he said indifferently. ‘The bigger beating he gets the more he respects O’Shea.’

He wriggled a little closer to his confederate.

‘Have you ever seen O’Shea—his face, I mean?’ he asked, dropping his voice a note lower. ‘I never have, and I’ve done two—’ he thought ‘—three,’ he corrected, ‘jobs with him. He’s always had that coat on he’s got now, with the collar right up to his nose, the same old hat over his eyes. I never used to believe there was that kind of crook—thought they were only seen on the stage. First time I ever heard of him was when he sent for me—met him on the St Albans Road about twelve o’clock, but never saw his face. He knew all about me; told me how many convictions I’d had, and the kind of work he wanted me for—’

‘And paid you well,’ said Marks lazily, when the other paused. ‘He always pays well; he always picks up his ‘staff’ in the same way.’

He pursed his lips as though he were going to whistle, examined the restless figure of the master thoughtfully.

‘He’s mad—and he pays well. He will pay better this time.’

Connor looked up sharply.