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The Man Who Bought London
King Kerry is going to buy London. This morning he is on his way to buy shops in Oxford Street. Elsie Marion is late for work when she falls into conversation with him. Suddenly two shots ring out. They miss, but King Kerry seems to know his attacker. From a high office window a man shakes his someday, the man vows, 'I will find a bullet that goes to its mark - and the girl from Denver City will be free!'
202 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1915
19 people are currently reading
132 people want to read
About the author
Edgar Wallace
2,169 books260 followersRichard 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 12, 2020
Did you know if you type The Man Who Bought London into that search box on your computer you don't get the book written by Edgar Wallace in 1915, you get The Man Who Bought London silent picture filmed in 1916? I'm not sure who would know that unless you tried to do the exact same thing I just did. Since I'm still on the Wikipedia page I may as well tell you that:
The Man Who Bought London is a 1916 British silent crime film directed by Floyd Martin Thornton and starring E.J. Arundel, Evelyn Boucher and Roy Travers. It was based on the 1915 novel of the same title by Edgar Wallace. It was the first of many Wallace stories to be adapted into films. It was made at Catford Studios.
It also starred a whole bunch of people I've not only never heard of, but I'm pretty sure they've all been dead a long, long time. I didn't look, but that's my guess. It does make me want to watch the movie a tiny little bit, not enough to go look for it though. Anyway, back to the book which apparently didn't impress anyone near as much as the movie did. I already told you that it was written by Edgar Wallace in 1915, one of many books he wrote. He wrote and wrote and wrote, so much that one of his publishers claimed that a quarter of all books in England were written by him. I don't know if that's true, and I'm certainly not going to try to figure it out, that's way too much math for me, I already have a migraine. He did write screen plays, which I would hope he did, enough movies were made from his books, also 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. I wonder who counted all that up, if you want to compare that to some other author to see who wins the most prolific writer award be my guest. In all that stuff he wrote, I read his mysteries, and I like his mysteries.
I include The Man Who Bought London as one of the books I liked, but I don't like the idea of this one man buying up all the land around him, starting his own really, really big store and putting all the little stores close to him out of business. It seems mean. Of course, I suppose that's what stores like Walmart do. Sorry to anyone who works at Walmart but you know what I mean. They didn't have the internet stores back then or I'd mention them too. Anyway, the little stores are all going out of business because of the rich guy who buys everything, and they aren't happy about it, neither am I even though he is the good guy in the book. Now going into this world of business there is one thing I know and understand less than the world of business is the world of politics and I don't want to know anything about either one, so my understanding of what is going on may be wrong.
As far as I can tell our main guy, the rich one with the unusual name of King Kerry buys up everything he can, but not just by himself, oh never mind, I'll never explain it right so here it is:
Though all the world now knows of King Kerry, and his life and achievements are inscribed more or less accurately in the scrappy works of reference which are so popular nowadays, only a privileged few know of the inception of the great Trust which came to London in 19—. It came about indirectly as a result of the Shearman Anti-Trust Law which caused wholesale resignations from the boards of American companies, and drove what is known on the other side of the Atlantic as the “mergers” out of business. These were Trust men who had done nothing in their lives but combine conflicting business interests into one great monopoly. They found themselves scarcely within the pale of the law—they found, too, that their opportunities were limited. These men had dealt in millions. They had liquid assets, hard cash ready for employment at a moment’s notice. They came in a body to England—the eight greatest financiers of the United States. Bolscombe E. Grant rented Tamby Hall from the Earl of Dichester; Thomas A. Logge (the Wire King) settled in London; Gould Lampest bought an estate in Lincolnshire; and the others—Verity Sullivan, Combare Lee, Big Jack Simms, and King Kerry—settled down in London.
There, I hope that helped. One of the men who wanted to get in on all this buying stuff is Hermann Zeberlieff, and Hermann did manage to join them for awhile, he threw some 1,200,000 pounds into the pool, but then he talked, and talked to the press, and talking isn't good. He had jeopardized the success of the project by alarming a public too ready to be scared by one of two words—“trust” and “conscription.” That got him kicked out of the group, the "L" trust they call themselves, and he's mad. Here's what happens to Hermann:
Zeberlieff was a large holder of United Western Railway stock. On the morning the photograph appeared the stock stood at 23 per share in the market. By the next afternoon it had beaten down to 12 10s. On the following day it slumped to 8—a sensational drop. The most powerful group in the world had “beared” it. Hermann crawled out of the mess with a loss of 800,000.
That's bad. I don't know why, but it is. So now Hermann doesn't have any money, hardly any, and he hates the trust for what has happened, and he especially hates the man in charge of the trust, and that means he hates our hero, King Kerry. And that's what the story is about, with a whole bunch of other stuff thrown in. He doesn't care how he hurts Kerry, just so long as he does it, murder, kidnapping, stealing, whatever it takes, and on top of all that, he has a secret about Kerry that no one else knows. No one even has a hint, no one could, especially those of us reading the book. I like Kerry, most of the time, but not all of the time. I just couldn't bring myself to like him putting the smaller businesses out of business:
Kerry was content apparently to flit from one department of trade to another. He bought in one week Tabards, the famous confectioner, the Regent Treweller Company’s business, and Transome’s, the famous Transome, whose art fabrics were the wonder and the joy of the world.......
"What do you want for your precious store?”
“A million and a quarter,” replied Leete emphatically; “and not a penny less.”
Kerry shook his head. “Yours is a hand to mouth business,” he said slowly. “You pay medium dividends and you have no reserves.”
“We made a profit of a hundred and fifty thousand last year,” responded Leete with a quiet smile.
“Exactly—a little over ten per cent. of the price you ask–yet I offer you five hundred thousand pounds in cash for your business.”
Mr. Leete got up from his chair very deliberately and pulled on his gloves. “Your offer is ridiculous,” he said. And, indeed, he thought it was.
King Kerry rose with him. “It is a little under what the property is worth,” he said; “but I am allowing a margin to recoup me for the sum I gave for Tack and Brighten—the sum in excess of its value.” He walked with the visitor to the door.
“I would ask you to come to lunch and talk it over,” he said; “but, unfortunately, I have to go to Liverpool this afternoon.”
“All the talking-over in the world wouldn’t alter my offer,” said Mr. Leete grimly. “Your proposition is absurd!”
“You’ll be glad to take it before the year’s out,” said King Kerry, and closed the door behind the inwardly raging Mr. Leete.
He does get it, but I'm not sure if he pays for it or just waits til the other guy goes out of business and then buys it. Most of the people with the little businesses are bad guys, but I still didn't like that about our hero. But he not only finds himself rich, and powerful, and in danger of being killed at any minute, or robbed, or both, he also finds himself in the middle of a love story. A love story with an unusual ending. I liked the book, if for nothing else I would have loved it for the ending which I can't resist sharing, don't read it if you don't want to know the last line in the novel:
“I love Chamonix,” she said after a while, “It is so splendid—Mont Blanc with his white smooth head always above you. I wish we could take Mont Blanc to England with us,” she added whimsically.
“I’ll ask the price of it,” said the Man who Bought London.
Happy reading.
The Man Who Bought London is a 1916 British silent crime film directed by Floyd Martin Thornton and starring E.J. Arundel, Evelyn Boucher and Roy Travers. It was based on the 1915 novel of the same title by Edgar Wallace. It was the first of many Wallace stories to be adapted into films. It was made at Catford Studios.
It also starred a whole bunch of people I've not only never heard of, but I'm pretty sure they've all been dead a long, long time. I didn't look, but that's my guess. It does make me want to watch the movie a tiny little bit, not enough to go look for it though. Anyway, back to the book which apparently didn't impress anyone near as much as the movie did. I already told you that it was written by Edgar Wallace in 1915, one of many books he wrote. He wrote and wrote and wrote, so much that one of his publishers claimed that a quarter of all books in England were written by him. I don't know if that's true, and I'm certainly not going to try to figure it out, that's way too much math for me, I already have a migraine. He did write screen plays, which I would hope he did, enough movies were made from his books, also 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. I wonder who counted all that up, if you want to compare that to some other author to see who wins the most prolific writer award be my guest. In all that stuff he wrote, I read his mysteries, and I like his mysteries.
I include The Man Who Bought London as one of the books I liked, but I don't like the idea of this one man buying up all the land around him, starting his own really, really big store and putting all the little stores close to him out of business. It seems mean. Of course, I suppose that's what stores like Walmart do. Sorry to anyone who works at Walmart but you know what I mean. They didn't have the internet stores back then or I'd mention them too. Anyway, the little stores are all going out of business because of the rich guy who buys everything, and they aren't happy about it, neither am I even though he is the good guy in the book. Now going into this world of business there is one thing I know and understand less than the world of business is the world of politics and I don't want to know anything about either one, so my understanding of what is going on may be wrong.
As far as I can tell our main guy, the rich one with the unusual name of King Kerry buys up everything he can, but not just by himself, oh never mind, I'll never explain it right so here it is:
Though all the world now knows of King Kerry, and his life and achievements are inscribed more or less accurately in the scrappy works of reference which are so popular nowadays, only a privileged few know of the inception of the great Trust which came to London in 19—. It came about indirectly as a result of the Shearman Anti-Trust Law which caused wholesale resignations from the boards of American companies, and drove what is known on the other side of the Atlantic as the “mergers” out of business. These were Trust men who had done nothing in their lives but combine conflicting business interests into one great monopoly. They found themselves scarcely within the pale of the law—they found, too, that their opportunities were limited. These men had dealt in millions. They had liquid assets, hard cash ready for employment at a moment’s notice. They came in a body to England—the eight greatest financiers of the United States. Bolscombe E. Grant rented Tamby Hall from the Earl of Dichester; Thomas A. Logge (the Wire King) settled in London; Gould Lampest bought an estate in Lincolnshire; and the others—Verity Sullivan, Combare Lee, Big Jack Simms, and King Kerry—settled down in London.
There, I hope that helped. One of the men who wanted to get in on all this buying stuff is Hermann Zeberlieff, and Hermann did manage to join them for awhile, he threw some 1,200,000 pounds into the pool, but then he talked, and talked to the press, and talking isn't good. He had jeopardized the success of the project by alarming a public too ready to be scared by one of two words—“trust” and “conscription.” That got him kicked out of the group, the "L" trust they call themselves, and he's mad. Here's what happens to Hermann:
Zeberlieff was a large holder of United Western Railway stock. On the morning the photograph appeared the stock stood at 23 per share in the market. By the next afternoon it had beaten down to 12 10s. On the following day it slumped to 8—a sensational drop. The most powerful group in the world had “beared” it. Hermann crawled out of the mess with a loss of 800,000.
That's bad. I don't know why, but it is. So now Hermann doesn't have any money, hardly any, and he hates the trust for what has happened, and he especially hates the man in charge of the trust, and that means he hates our hero, King Kerry. And that's what the story is about, with a whole bunch of other stuff thrown in. He doesn't care how he hurts Kerry, just so long as he does it, murder, kidnapping, stealing, whatever it takes, and on top of all that, he has a secret about Kerry that no one else knows. No one even has a hint, no one could, especially those of us reading the book. I like Kerry, most of the time, but not all of the time. I just couldn't bring myself to like him putting the smaller businesses out of business:
Kerry was content apparently to flit from one department of trade to another. He bought in one week Tabards, the famous confectioner, the Regent Treweller Company’s business, and Transome’s, the famous Transome, whose art fabrics were the wonder and the joy of the world.......
"What do you want for your precious store?”
“A million and a quarter,” replied Leete emphatically; “and not a penny less.”
Kerry shook his head. “Yours is a hand to mouth business,” he said slowly. “You pay medium dividends and you have no reserves.”
“We made a profit of a hundred and fifty thousand last year,” responded Leete with a quiet smile.
“Exactly—a little over ten per cent. of the price you ask–yet I offer you five hundred thousand pounds in cash for your business.”
Mr. Leete got up from his chair very deliberately and pulled on his gloves. “Your offer is ridiculous,” he said. And, indeed, he thought it was.
King Kerry rose with him. “It is a little under what the property is worth,” he said; “but I am allowing a margin to recoup me for the sum I gave for Tack and Brighten—the sum in excess of its value.” He walked with the visitor to the door.
“I would ask you to come to lunch and talk it over,” he said; “but, unfortunately, I have to go to Liverpool this afternoon.”
“All the talking-over in the world wouldn’t alter my offer,” said Mr. Leete grimly. “Your proposition is absurd!”
“You’ll be glad to take it before the year’s out,” said King Kerry, and closed the door behind the inwardly raging Mr. Leete.
He does get it, but I'm not sure if he pays for it or just waits til the other guy goes out of business and then buys it. Most of the people with the little businesses are bad guys, but I still didn't like that about our hero. But he not only finds himself rich, and powerful, and in danger of being killed at any minute, or robbed, or both, he also finds himself in the middle of a love story. A love story with an unusual ending. I liked the book, if for nothing else I would have loved it for the ending which I can't resist sharing, don't read it if you don't want to know the last line in the novel:
“I love Chamonix,” she said after a while, “It is so splendid—Mont Blanc with his white smooth head always above you. I wish we could take Mont Blanc to England with us,” she added whimsically.
“I’ll ask the price of it,” said the Man who Bought London.
Happy reading.
January 17, 2023
I thought I knew all the sorts of twists Edgar Wallace would pull but I didn't see that coming! It's a perfect fast-paced summer read for anyone who likes this sort of noir-ish novel.
June 14, 2013
A charming Edgar Wallace book, totally unbelievable, any normal person would look upon King Kerry's plans to buy London with at least some suspicion and his delegating of jobs to the first good sort who comes along would be doomed to failure. Oddly the book is more concerned with the lead characters love life and ends when that is sorted out, perhaps after the book ends his grandiose schemes came crashing down around him, we'll never know Wallace never wrote a sequel.
September 3, 2019
An unexpectedly fascinating novel that at first glance seems contemporary in its approach, a tycoon buying up prime land, and then to find out it was written in 1915!
Snappy plot, reminiscent of a noir film (and there is a 1916 film of the book out there). Fast-paced, plot twists right and left and nary any cliches—although the surprise ending is a huge surprise.
The author wrote 170 novels! If the others are as entertaining as this one I will be busy trying to find them.
Snappy plot, reminiscent of a noir film (and there is a 1916 film of the book out there). Fast-paced, plot twists right and left and nary any cliches—although the surprise ending is a huge surprise.
The author wrote 170 novels! If the others are as entertaining as this one I will be busy trying to find them.
October 3, 2015
Chased out of the U.S. by anti-trust legislation, American millionaire King Kerry and his compatriots are buying up London real estate and commerce, much to the dismay of their competitors. Kerry, meanwhile, is plagued by an implacable enemy and a dark, romantic secret out of his past.
Something of a potboiler, but the story moves along, and comes to a somewhat surprising end.
Something of a potboiler, but the story moves along, and comes to a somewhat surprising end.
September 30, 2024
That typically Edgar Wallace thing: simultaneously far-fetched and down-to-earth, told briskly with a plot that doesn't allow you any time for picking holes. In short, a good undemanding read for a Summer weekend.
July 13, 2022
Wonderful entertaining listening 🎧
Another will written British relationship family adventure thriller by Edgar Wallace about a man buying all kinds of property and business in London. He has few frirends but lots of enemies. I would highly recommend this novel to readers of British novels. Enjoy the adventure of reading lots of different types of books. 2022
Another will written British relationship family adventure thriller by Edgar Wallace about a man buying all kinds of property and business in London. He has few frirends but lots of enemies. I would highly recommend this novel to readers of British novels. Enjoy the adventure of reading lots of different types of books. 2022
January 7, 2020
Written in something of a rambling style, it is also formatted poorly as an ebook. An odd twist at the end, but seemed a bit disconnected from the rest of the story. The King Kerry empire building storyline was more interesting than the family dynamics.
April 22, 2019
Bel romanzo di Wallace, ben costruito, avvincente, ma il colpo di scena finale, davvero sorprendente, mi è sembrato però un po' troppo azzardato e la conclusione della storia un po' troppo affrettata
November 22, 2020
An entertaining novel with quite some twist and a very unexpected ending. I enjoyed it a lot.
August 11, 2021
A classic book which I enjoyed a lot. I recommend it!
Want to read
June 26, 2016Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1 April 1875 – 10 February 1932) was an English writer. Born into poverty as an illegitimate London child, Wallace left school at 12. And so began the most incredible write as a writer in wars and all over the world... #mystery #thriller #suspense #biography
July 9, 2015
Fantastic in every sense of the word. I love the pace and the good nature, it's a great story and a good plot and without spoiling anything, I never knew - never.
Want to read
February 4, 2016Bas Bleu Bluestocking Book of the Month, October 2016
Read
April 20, 2016Ward, Lock, & Co., n.d.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews