Der Engel des Schreckens

by Edgar Wallace

The Angel of Terror aka The Destroying Angel Jack Glover of Rennet, Glover and Simpson does not believe his cousin Meredith killed Bulford. Meredith's father was an eccentric and unless Meredith is married by the age of thirty his sister inherits everything. She is dead and Meredith, now in prison, is thirty next Monday. Meanwhile Lydia Beale is struggling to pay her dead father's creditors. When Glover offers her money she is shocked. However, despite the strange conditions attached, it is a proposal she cannot afford to ignore.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Classics, Crime, Thriller, Ebooks, Romance

Perfect Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

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.

He is most famous today as the co-creator of "King Kong", writing the early screenplay and story for the movie, as well as a short story "King Kong" (1933) credited to him and Draycott Dell. He was known for the J. G. Reeder detective stories, The Four Just Men, the Ringer, and for creating the Green Archer character during his lifetime.

Reviews

[Sonja Rosa Lisa ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Als Hörbuch gehört hat mich die Geschichte recht gut unterhalten können. Sie wirkt ein bisschen altmodisch inzwischen, aber gerade das ist vielleicht auch das Interessante daran.

[Charles van Buren · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining romantic thriller and crime story featuring a strong, ruthless female criminal. It relies on coincidence and far fetched events but in the beginning of the tale, Wallace points out that many of the events would be unbelievable outside of fiction. I think that perhaps he was poking gentle fun at himself and his novel.

I have read that Wallace is out of fashion with modern readers which is a shame. He was a fine writer who was too successful and prolific for those whose self-appointed jobs are to make pronouncements on what is and is not literature.

Here is a quote from the afterward: "A prolific writer, one of Wallace's publishers claimed that a quarter of all books then read in England were written by him. As well as journalism, Wallace wrote screen plays, poetry, historical non-fiction, 18 stage plays, 957 short stories and over 170 novels, 12 in 1929 alone. More than 160 films have been made of Wallace's work. He is remembered for the creation of King Kong, as a writer of 'the colonial imagination', for the J. G. Reeder detective stories, and the Green Archer. Selling over 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions, the Economist describes him as "one of the most prolific thriller writers of [the 20th] century", although few of his books are still in print in the UK."

I downloaded the free Kindle edition. Many of Wallace's books are free from Amazon. If you like Edgar Rice Burroughs, I recommend Wallace's stories and books about Sanders of the river.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been wanting to read one or two of Edgar Wallace's novels for some time to see what all the fuss was about in his day. This tale of an amoral but beautiful woman and her victims was surprisingly timeless and entertaining, just perfect for a day of airplane travel after days of fatiguing meetings and work.

[Julie Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a riveting tale which sets out with a man being sentenced for murder and a beautiful, innocent woman having had to testify against him. Except, what everyone thinks is exactly opposite to the truth, according to the condemned man's friend and attorney, Jack Glover. He claims that his friend was framed. Meanwhile, poverty-stricken Lydia gets pulled into this scenario completely out of the blue and is put in the situation of having to decide who to trust.

One person is telling the truth and the other is out to murder her. We are not really ever in the dark about it, but watching Lydia's thinking and also seeing the behind-the-scenes machinations makes this a real page-turner.

(This is another book I discovered free for the Kindle. Also, check Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org) for it. This reading by Lee Elliott at Librivox is great.

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

“‘[…] Killing is a matter of expediency. Permissible if you call it war, terrible if you call it murder. To me it is just killing. If you are caught in the act of killing, they kill you, and people say it is right to do so. The sacredness of human life is a slogan invented by cowards who fear death – as you do.’

‘Don’t you, Jean?’ he asked in a hushed voice.

‘I fear life without money’, she said quietly. ‘I fear long days of work for a callous, leering employer, and strap-hanging in a crowded tube on my way home to one miserable room and the cold mutton of yesterday. […] I fear a poor husband and a procession of children, and doing the housework with an incompetent maid, or maybe with any at all. […]’”

Edgar Wallace himself must have been quite taken with the amoral Jean Briggerland, the eponymous Angel of Terror, because he allows her to steal the best scenes from everyone else in the book, and tries to invest her with more psychological depth than any other character in the book (maybe with the exception of the gambler Marcus Stepney) unfurls. The story itself is extremely fast-paced and, at least to poor naïve me, often unpredictable. However, you have to be able to accept the following things:

a) that a woman is willing to marry somebody she has never seen before but whom she knows to be convicted on charge of wilful murder;
b) that an innocent man, who is convicted on charge of wilful murder, is ready to marry a woman he has never seen before just to outwit a clause of his father’s testament that made it obligatory for him to be in the chains of wedlock by his 30th birthday;
c) that two lawyers are ready to risk their reputations and their licenses just to aid and abet their client in escaping from prison to perform that wedding ceremony.

We might have watched just enough reality shows to no longer find anything unusual or morally questionable about any of the three above-listed heads, and this makes us ready to embark on the journey Wallace has prepared for us. But still, there is another concession our scepticism has to make, namely that

d) the woman who gets married in the above-mentioned way is naïve enough not to see through any of Jean Briggerland’s attempts at murdering her, even though in some cases one does not have to be able to look through a millstone in order to notice what Jean is up to. And yet, Lydia, the only person that stands between Jean and the family fortune, is willing to trust the other young woman, who looks so sweet and innocent, again and again so as to unwittingly write suicide notes swallowing one of the most threadbare red herrings – this metaphor is as mixed as my feelings about the book – that must ever have been used.

Okay, you might say that this is probably not the daftest kind of behaviour and the dimmest spark of judgment you have ever witnessed in a human being, and you will doubtless be right. And maybe, this is also what fuels Jack Glover’s – he is one of the lawyers involved in this case – love for Lydia, whose husband is conveniently killed a few minutes after the wedding ceremony, because what could be more satisfying for a man so impressed by himself than besteading a damsel constantly in distress?

Well, the novel went on at a swift pace, and I cannot say that I was longing for it to reach its final chapter, but when it finally did reach this chapter, I felt a bit disappointed by the ending. At least in a crime novel, I’d like the ending to be nicely tied up, justice meted out and all that … But then, as I said, Wallace himself might have been swept away by Jean, in that not being any wiser than most of his characters, with the exception of Jack Glover.

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

Diverting, but certainly not in the same class as, say, Dorothy Sayers or even Agatha Christie. Events are predictable, characters are stupid on cue, things happen conveniently Because Plot, that sort of thing. A good bathtub or beach read, where you don't really want to have to pay too much attention.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a 3.5 star read.
Rating only.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exquisitely beautiful and thoroughly vile, Jean is a scheming murderer, who gets away with multiple murders because she is so so lovely, innocent looking, and a skilled liar. But lawyer Jack Glover has her pegged, and does his best to protect Jean's latest target, an unbelievably naive and debt-ridden working girl, who unexpectedly inherits the fortune that Jean had planned on acquiring. In spite of the tense nature of the plot, it is told in quite a humorous manner with a cast of fascinating characters. First published in 1922, I listened to this as a free download from LibriVox.org.

[Marin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely, read this! Very fast-paced, very tight and quick, very short (maybe 200ish pages).

The plot twists are very well done, I totally didn't see two-three things coming near the end.

I also loved the fact that it doesn't hide unknown villains, you know "everything" as the reader and seeing the story develop is very pleasantly done.

I will say no more because everything will be a spoiler, just - read this book!

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've posted about this novel at my reading journal along with Wallace's The Crimson Circle.

http://www.crimesegments.com/2019/06/...

In this book we find one of THE most cold-blooded, evil-minded and absolutely mercenary women villains who has ever graced the pages of a crime novel. Wallace counterbalances her strength and energy with another woman, Lydia Beale, who is completely clueless that attempts are being made on her life -- as many readers have noted, she is either hopelessly naive or absolutely stupid, and in my opinion, her character can become a bit exasperating.

However, knowing that there is no mystery here, and knowing right away who is trying to kill Lydia Beale, the story works if you look at it as a question of whether or not justice will ever be served. For me that's what saved this novel, which while reading, I will admit to laughing out loud more than once.

[Lydia · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 Sterne

5 Sterne erscheinen mir zu viel, aber ich kann ehrlich nicht sagen, woran es mir hier gefehlt hat; war nämlich echt sehr gut.

Ich müsste eigentlich ein Regal eröffnen mit Büchern, von denen ich mir gewünscht hätte, wir hätten sie im Unterricht behandelt und diskutiert - dieses wäre auch dabei.

[Athul C]

ശോകം വിവർത്തനം, റേറ്റിംഗ് ഇനി എപ്പഴേലും ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് വേർഷൻ വായിച്ച ശേഷം ഇടാം 🥲

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sorry I started on this book. I kept reading, hoping it would get better but it never did. The lead character, Lydia, was incredibly naive and stupid. How could everyone be deceived by the villaness, Jean? I do not recommend. I only give it two stars because there are some exciting scenes but, overall, the end was disappointing.

[Bre Teschendorf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did anyone else think Lydia deserved to die for being so stupid? Her stupidity nearly ruined the book for me. I actually wanted the "bad guys" to succeed. Nevertheless, three stars because this book was fun, I loved so much of it being set in the south of France, I was in suspense and Jane Briggerland is a really wonderful character. A fun quick read.

[Francesco Luchetta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sicuramente la parte Thrilling riesce molto bene, con giusta suspance e suscitando l'interesse del lettore. Il difetto è che molte delle cose che accadono paiono improbabili, esagerate, innaturali e troppo manifestamente asservite alla trama.

[Kavita · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite a dramatic read, almost sort of a daily soap. While the villainess was wildly ambitious, the victim painfully innocent and the detective overly sure of the crime, the end with Marcus Stepney was much satisfactory.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Angel of Terror also known as The Destroying Angel is a novel by Edgar Wallace published in 1922. I assume it was also written in 1922 since this guy must have been one of the fastest writers there ever was, which he'd have to be to write all the books he wrote. Not only did he have quite a few books, but he also had quite a few names, Wikipedia says of him:

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1 April 1875 – 10 February 1932) was an English writer.

Rather short, that was. However further down it also tells us that:

Wallace was born at 7 Ashburnham Grove, Greenwich, to actors Richard Horatio Marriott Edgar (1847–1894) and Mary Jane "Polly" Richards, née Blair.

To me this would make his last name Edgar, not Wallace. But moving on we're told:

Wallace's parents had a "broom cupboard" style sexual encounter during an after-show party. Discovering she was pregnant, his mother invented a fictitious obligation in Greenwich that would last at least half a year and obtained a room in a boarding house where she lived until her son's birth, on 1 April 1875. During her confinement she had asked her midwife to find a couple to foster the child. The midwife introduced Wallace's mother to her close friend, Mrs Freeman, a mother of ten children, whose husband George Freeman was a Billingsgate fishmonger. On 9 April 1875, his mother took Wallace to the semi-literate Freeman family, and made arrangements to visit often.

Wallace, then known as Richard Horatio Edgar Freeman, had a happy childhood and a close bond with 20-year-old Clara Freeman, who became a second mother to him. By 1878, his mother could no longer afford the small sum she had been paying the Freemans to care for her son and, instead of placing the boy in the workhouse, the Freemans adopted him. His mother never visited Wallace again as a child.

Nice lady. We have now dropped the Wallace from his name, but it will return, obviously. And here it comes:

By his early teens, Wallace had held down numerous jobs such as newspaper-seller at Ludgate Circus near Fleet Street, milk-delivery boy, rubber factory worker, shoe shop assistant, and ship’s cook. A plaque at Ludgate Circus commemorates Wallace's first encounter with the newspaper business. He was dismissed from his job on the milk run for stealing money. In 1894, he became engaged to a local Deptford girl, Edith Anstree, but broke the engagement and enlisted in the infantry.

Wallace registered in the army under the name Edgar Wallace, after the author of Ben-Hur, Lew Wallace. At the time the medical records register him as having a 33-inch chest and being stunted from his childhood spent in the slums. He was posted in South Africa with the West Kent Regiment, in 1896. He disliked army life but managed to arrange a transfer to the Royal Army Medical Corps, which was less arduous but more unpleasant, and so transferred again to the Press Corps, which he found suited him better.

And that's how he got his name. How he got to be an author was, while still in the armed forces he began publishing songs and poetry, his first book of ballads was published in 1898. With the money from his book he bought his way out of the armed forces, something I didn't know you could do, and turned to writing full time. And he did that a lot. Going back to London he bagan writing detective stories (the ones I've been reading) to earn quick money. Oh, this I found interesting:

In 1903, Wallace met his birth mother Polly, whom he had never known. Terminally ill, 60 years old, and living in poverty, she came to ask for money and was turned away. Polly died in the Bradford Infirmary later that year.

I'm not sure what I think of that. But now he was busy writing, and writing, and writing. In fact he wrote so much that one of his publishers claimed that a quarter of all books in England were written by him. And how did he do this? Here you go:

Wallace narrated his words onto wax cylinders (the dictaphones of the day) and his secretaries typed up the text. This may be why he was able to work at such high speed and why his stories have narrative drive. Many of Wallace's critically successful books were dictated like this over two or three days, locked away with cartons of cigarettes and endless pots of sweet tea, often working pretty much uninterrupted in 72 hours. Most of his novels were serialised in segments but written in this way. The serialised stories that were instead written piecemeal have a distinctly different narrative energy, not sweeping up the reader on the story wave.

Wallace rarely edited his own work after it was dictated and typed up, but sent it straight to the publishers, intensely disliking the revision of his work with other editors. The company would do only cursory checks for factual errors before printing.

Wallace faced widespread accusations that he used ghost writers to churn out books, though there is no evidence of this, and his prolificness became something of a joke, the subject of cartoons and sketches. His 'three day books', reeled off to keep the loan sharks from the door, were unlikely to garner great critical praise and Wallace claimed not to find literary value in his own works.

Talking into wax cylinders means nothing to me, I can't get a picture of such a thing in my mind. Oh, and I'm addicted to sweet tea. Here's more:

As well as journalism, Wallace wrote screen plays, poetry, historical non-fiction, 18 stage plays, 957 short stories, and over 170 novels, 12 in 1929 alone. More than 160 films have been made of Wallace's work. He is remembered for the creation of King Kong, as a writer of 'the colonial imagination', for the J. G. Reeder detective stories, and for The Green Archer serial. He sold over 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions, and The Economist describes him as "one of the most prolific thriller writers of [the 20th] century", although few of his books are still in print in the UK.

170 novels and few of his books are still in print. I wonder why. Perhaps the people in charge of keeping these things in print read The Angel of Terror, I suppose that could have done it. Yes, I've reached the one of the 170 I just finished reading.

This has to be one of the dumbest books I've read. Well, it has one of the dumbest leading ladies in it anyway. I was so disappointed with this book from the first chapter, it's supposed to be a mystery, I love mysteries, but only if they are mysterious and this one wasn't. Oh, if you ever plan on reading this, perhaps you should skip the rest of my review, if you continue, well don't say you weren't warned.

You could tell from the beginning where this was going. It starts with the trial of James Meredith. Mr. Meredith is found guilty of murder. According to the judge:

"James Meredith, you have been convicted after a long and patient trial of the awful crime of wilful murder. With the verdict of the jury I am in complete agreement. There is little doubt, after hearing the evidence of the unfortunate lady to whom you were engaged, and whose evidence you attempted in the most brutal manner to refute, that, instigated by your jealousy, you shot Ferdinand Bulford. The evidence of Miss Briggerland that you had threatened this poor young man, and that you left her presence in a temper, is unshaken. By a terrible coincidence, Mr. Bulford was in the street outside your fiancée's door when you left, and maddened by your insane jealousy, you shot him dead.

"To suggest, as you have through your counsel, that you called at Miss Briggerland's that night to break off your engagement and that the interview was a mild one and unattended by recriminations is to suggest that this lady has deliberately committed perjury in order to swear away your life, and when to that disgraceful charge you produce a motive, namely that by your death or imprisonment Miss Briggerland, who is your cousin, would benefit to a considerable extent, you merely add to your infamy. Nobody who saw the young girl in the box, a pathetic, and if I may say, a beautiful figure, could accept for one moment your fantastic explanation.

"Who killed Ferdinand Bulford? A man without an enemy in the world. That tragedy cannot be explained away. It now only remains for me to pass the sentence which the law imposes. The jury's recommendation to mercy will be forwarded to the proper quarter...."

Keep in mind how beautiful Miss Briggerland is, you hear that a lot. And since she is so beautiful she couldn't be making up the story of poor James Meredith shooting the other guy, could she? Of course not, the judge says so. James is very wealthy, so if Miss Briggerland had married him she would have been very wealthy, but since he isn't going to marry her she isn't going to be is she? Oh, wait a minute, she is his cousin, and if he dies, well guess who would get his money? And if he committed an awful murder of course he will get the death sentence and once he's dead......well, she is too beautiful to do a thing like that. Or as the one lawyer says:

"Mad!" he said huskily. "He must be mad! If ever I saw a pure soul in a woman's face, it is in hers!"

So James goes to prison and unfortunately for beautiful people, he does not get the death penalty. Now comes the next problem in the money making scheme, since James isn't going to die, the beautiful lady must wait until he turns thirty, for some odd reason it was a condition of his father's will that he must be married by the time he is 30 or he will lose the inheritance and it will go on to his next successor. And guess who that is! But she is just so beautiful. And this is where our leading lady without a brain comes in.

Mr. Meredith's lawyer and best friend is John Glover so he knows all about the 30th birthday thing. He and his partner search the world over (well, not quite that far) for a girl who will agree to marry James Meredith. They think they have found her in Lydia Beale. Miss Beale is single, and thanks to her now deceased father, poor. He left a large debt behind for her to deal with when he died and she has been working as an illustrator for a newspaper trying to slowly pay all his debts. Mr. Glover has searched the County Court records of London to see if there was a girl in urgent need of money, and found Lydia. She is not married or engaged, she has a heavy burden of debts, and she is unencumbered by relations or friends. His words, not mine. And so Mr Glover goes in search of Miss Beale to propose a plan to her, she should marry Meredith and will have five thousand pounds a year for the rest of her life, plus a sum of twenty thousand pounds down. The trouble now is that our beautiful lady, Miss Briggerland and her father have been doing the same thing, only not to encourage the marriage, but to prevent it.

First they try to kidnap her, but Mr. Glover gets her away from her fake taxi cab driver and takes her to his partner's home where her about to be husband is hiding. Men who escape from prison to get married have to hide until the wedding, which is what happens. The next morning they are married. The next morning Jean Briggerland rushes in to stop the man she loves from making a mistake, but too late. The next morning while Jean is in the room with the new bride, and the lawyers, and the Priest, James, who has left the room manages to commit suicide by shooting himself in the left temple, but the gun is in his right hand. That must have been quite the trick. Of course neither Jean or her father could have had anything to do with it, she is simply too beautiful.

And now we come to the part that Lydia plays the main role and you realize how stupid she is. First, coming out of the theatre with Jean and her father, the Briggerlands chauffeur loses control of the car while pulling up, comes up onto the sidewalk and nearly hits Lydia, luckily someone pulls her out of the way in time. The chauffeur looks just like the taxi cab driver, that's quite a coincidence, but has nothing to do with Jean, right? Then, we have Mr. Briggerland, he owns a "club" for released convicts, they can come there and start over or something like that. And Jean is telling one of them how her dear friend who lives at 84 Cavendish leaves her windows open all the time, and has so much money and so many jewels just laying around, she thinks she is being careless, why, anyone could just climb in and do away with her and take everything. After all she keeps the jewelry under her pillow. Then it just so happens that is what happens, a man breaks into Lydia's home, luckily someone sees him and saves both Lydia and her jewelry. But of course that was just a coincidence too, Jean is so beautiful.

Then Mr. Briggerland, who happens to be writing a book on crazy people and visiting insane asylums, that we never hear about again, happens to talk to one of them about this girl, and the crazy man just happens to escape that night and show up in Lydia's bedroom. It's good the thieves decided to try again or she would have been killed by a mad man. Luckily, that saved her.

When they go swimming, someone shoots at Lydia, just after Jean asked her to stand up on the deck, and just after Jean's father had to "leave" to go check on something. But, that beautiful girl couldn't have.......Oh, he's a bad shot. Luckily.

They happen to go to this beautiful place by the sea (I can't remember where), and it isn't until they are there they find there is a smallpox outbreak. The gardener's son has it. But they won't let that ruin their trip, so Jean arranges for them all to go out for a nice dinner, or something like that, but she is feeling tired and doesn't go. After dressing in some long coat with a net over her hair, a mask over her face, and gloves on, she isn't too tired to sneak into the gardener's house and carry the sick and unconscious boy to the house and lay him on Lydia's bed for a few hours. She is so nice giving the boy a soft bed like that. She does return him to his own bed before Lydia is back though, after all, Lydia must sleep somewhere. However, somehow when Lydia gets home her bed has been drenched with water. Someone dumped bucket after bucket of water on it and she can't sleep on it that night. She happens to find the cross the sick boy always wears in her bed, but can't understand how it got there. After all, the only person home had been Jean, and she's just too.......

There's more, there's more tries, there's even another murder, Lydia's guardian angel still keeps saving her. I could go on, but I don't want to. I'll just say that enough things happen after that, that perhaps Lydia will finally come to the end of her short days on earth. I wonder if she would believe who killed her when it finally worked.

I'm back. This book was getting a one star for quite awhile, until I realized I was wondering what the next exciting attempt at a crime would be, so I moved it to a two star, then nearing the end, something finally happened that I wasn't expecting and I was so thrilled that something unexpected happened I'm moving my stars up to three. And that's all I have to say about it. It's a short book, easy and quick to read, so go ahead and give it a try. If you can find it in print that is. Happy reading.

Oh, I almost forgot:

"Of course she is very beautiful," she said in answer to the interminable repetition of his question. "I think she's lovely."

"That's what I say," said the young man, whom she discovered was Lord Stoker. "The most amazingly beautiful creature on the earth, I think."

[Carl Alves · Rating 4 out of 5]

I generally find that novels written from a century or more ago don’t generally translate well today. All of it has to do with storytelling style, which was often archaic from that time period with poor dialogue and technique that wouldn’t fly today. But I found The Angel of Terror to be a compelling read that has held up well over the years. What I liked most about it was that the story featured a female villain that was absolutely diabolical, narcissistic, and was a master manipulator. In mysteries, you typically find more generic male anatagonists, so I found this to be refreshing.

I thought the novel moved at a good pace. It wasn’t overly long, but it was long enough to tell the story that it needed to tell. The writing was fundamentally sound and didn’t suffer from many of the problems that I find with writing from that time period. What I didn’t like about the novel was the Lydia, the story’s protagonist. She was complete idiot who was hard to root for. In fact, because of the contrast in the development of these two characters, I was hoping that Lydia would be bested in the end, even though I knew that was unlikely. This is a novel worth reading.

Carl Alves – author of The Invocation

[Lydia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Náhodný výber z domácej knižnice. Thriller či detektívka? Hm, skôr zvláštny mix oboch a dokonca nie veľmi oslnivý. Postačil však, ako oddychové rýchle čítanie. Mimochodom, "hrdinka" sa volá Lýdia. Je neuveriteľne naivná a hlúpa. Hodnoteniu to teda nepomohlo :-)

[Perry Whitford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edgar Wallace is becoming something of a guilty pleasure with me. Like black pudding I know that I shouldn't go there - oatmeal, gristle, beef suet, congealed pig's blood, all the floor sweepings - yet I keep eating the foul stuff.

Wallace didn't publish his first novel until he was thirty years of age. By the time he died, aged fifty six, he'd written no less than a hundred and seventy of them, nearly a thousand short stories, eighteen plays and countless screenplays for Hollywood, including King Kong.

How the hell could anybody he that insanely prolific? Reading The Angel of Terror goes a long way towards answering that question. The secret? He simply made it up as he was going along.

Of course it took a bit more than that to churn them out so prodigiously. You also need a firm commitment to do away with anything as fancy as characterisation, plot, intelligent dialogue, the barest regard for logic or sense.

Jean Briggerland is the angel of the title, a beautiful but heartless criminal "mastermind" who will stop at nothing to inherent the fortune of her cousin James Meredith, an expendable dimwit framed for murder. In order to foil her, Meredith's lawyer Jack Glover choses a woman at random named Lydia to marry this cousin. Lawyers do this sort of thing all the you know.

The angel of terror arranges for Meredith to be murdered literally moments after the wedding and now Mrs Meredith stands between Miss Briggerland and the loot. Glover, who seems unusually interested in Lydia's safety, assigns a guardian to protect the widow, an old man with a crippled arm, a limp and a squint. I'm serious. Instantly I thought, "No, surely not?" And of course it was.

The naughty angel sets criminals and lunatics after the witless Lydia, tries to have her run over, shot and pushed off a cliff. At one point she even abducted a child suffering from smallpox and put him in her bed! The good Jaggs limped into the fray to foil the femme fatale and her goons at every turn.

The general effect was like some B-movie by a brainless imitator of Alfred Hitchcock working without a script, without a storyboard, without a clue.

I enjoyed it.

[grosbeak]

You have to love a book that ends with everyone living happily ever after-- not just the insipidly innocent and naively trusting heroine and the dashingly honorable lawyer determined to protect her from the amoral and ruthless femme fatale trying to steal her inheritance, but also the useless gambler upper-class twit (he walks off into the sunset with a million francs) and the coldly amoral femme fatale herself, who finds a Moroccan prince as ruthless as she and who is charmed to finally find a woman equally committed to the rule of the stronger.

[Marti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jack Glover saves Lydia from a life of penury. Written early in the century, this is a book by an author whose works have been translated to television and film. Lydia had taken on the debts of her late father, and could not reduce the amount that his creditors were owed. THe Angel of Terror is a beautiful but ruthless woman who, along with her father, plots to steal all Lydia's fortune. How she is thwarted--well, read the book--

[Ann L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most excellent!! Great mystery! I loved the ending too. I didn't know Edgar Wallace was huge in his day and that many plays was made from his stories. It was different in that it was written so many years ago, that it took me to a place that is not modern. I would definitely read some of his other books. There were words I never heard of so I looked them up in the dictionary. The English writing has changed a lot! (for example, "kerb" was used instead of "curb").

[Seth Mitra · Rating 3 out of 5]

While definitely not as great as his previous works but quite good nonetheless. I found the protagonist to be too naive almost on the verge of being stupid, but the character of the antagonist is indeed quite interesting especially her role as a provocateur of evil. I would definitely recommend this for fans of victorian era mysteries.

[Starry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 1922 classic British mystery, made available via the Gutenberg Project, was more of an adventure story than mystery. The detective and reader know who is behind the dastardly plots, but the naive main character needs to be convinced. This novel was fun to read with its fast pace and plot twists.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this one, another free download to my Kindle, the "bad guy" was known right away. However, what was not known was how much danger could be done, and how would the bad guy eventually get caught. I enjoyed this one.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very odd book. I didn't like it as much as some of Edgar Wallace's other works, primarily because one of the primary characters seemed almost unbelievably naive. The book has an interesting (albeit relatively implausible) plot that kept me entertained.

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 5 out of 5]

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... Can Jack Glover stop her???

[Mary Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly good, but the heroine is unbelievably naive & too stupid for anyone to fall in love with. The villain however is extremely well written, as well as her nemesis, Jack Glover. Watching them trying too outwit each other throughout the book was a lot of fun.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an audio book and was rather interesting. It's a "murder mystery" but only in the sense of will the murder be found out by the society at large and be caught. I liked the premise and the characters and will remember the book because of the "non-traditional" ending.