SOURCE: "A Girl Detective," in The New York Times Book Review, June 19, 1927, p. 24.

In the following essay, the critic gives a favorable review of Wallace's The Girl from Scotland Yard, but faults Wallace for using "questionable" plot devices.

A past master of the mystery novel, with some thirty-odd volumes to his credit, has assembled in his latest thriller [A Girl Detective] a collection of characters precisely like those of many another yarn except for the fact that they are practically all women. Leslie Maughan the sleuth who solves the riddle, is the only girl detective at Scotland Yard. The villain—a very evil and sinister villain—is also a woman—the Princess Anita Bellini. And, finally, Druze, the murdered butler, is revealed to be a woman in disguise.

It is quite possible that Mr. Wallace has sprinkled the fair sex so liberally through his pages in order to...