The name Edgar Wallace too often suggests the sensational thriller, with dark deeds on darker nights, which is easily parodied or dismissed. What is overlooked is the fact that this prodigious writer was one of the most popular writers of this century. Measured by the standard of number of publications over a specific period of time, Edgar Wallace was one of the most prolific writers of the first third of the twentieth century. In number of titles, he may not have been the equal of the mystery writers John Creasey (1908-1973) or Georges Simenon (1903-) but to produce 173 novels, 24 plays, 61 sketches, over 200 short stories, and countless articles and adaptations in a period of about twenty-five years is still a prodigious feat. Unfortunately, a recitation of statistics like these has been substituted for any substantive discussion of those works.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born in Greenwich, 1 April 1875, the...