To many people detective fiction is nowadays synonymous with the novels of Mr. Edgar Wallace. Born in 1875, Mr. Wallace has had a varied career. He has served as a private soldier, been a miner, war correspondent, journalist on the staff of at least two London daily papers, and has experimented in numerous other occupations. Then three or four years ago his detective stories suddenly became popular; now he is one of the world's celebrities. If my memory does not play me false, it was only a few years ago that he was enlivening the columns of the less dignified Sunday papers with the adventures of an Aberdeen Annie: but he has put on his three-league boots since then. His international popularity is probably greatest in America and then Germany. He edits a German magazine of detective stories, and the enterprising bookseller of even the small German provincial town dresses his windows with an attractive display of Romanen von Edgar Wallace. Germans will smile at you when you inform them that of their contemporary writers you read only Ludwig, Feuchtwanger and Remarque. But you cannot afford to smile in return when they tell you they read Shaw, Galsworthy, and Edgar Wallace.

Mr. Wallace's output is the wonder of our age. Over two years ago, the Daily Mail published the following statistics of "returns":

140 novels (though he might have forgotten ten or a dozen).

Half a dozen plays (at least).

Two hundred (or it might be four hundred) short stories.

About 9,000,000 words.

Recent figures are not to hand, but although there has been a slight falling off in output, the figures quoted have been very considerably increased. This mass production means an uncanny precipitancy in execution, and no doubt Mr. Wallace's experience on the staff of the Daily News (1900) and the Daily Mail (1901-02) stood him in good stead. Mr. Wallace gives the following as his record speed:

A firm of publishers asked me on a Thursday for a novel of 70,000 words by noon on Monday. Working seventeen hours a day, dictating it all to a typist, with my wife doing the corrections, I delivered The Strange Countess on Monday morning.

One remembers, too, "The Midday Wallace" joke in Punch, and Mr. Wallace's favourite excerpt from the Wabash Monitor:

Edgar Wallace, world's most prolific writer, was called on the long-distance at the Marquery Hotel, Park Avenue, "Sorry," said his secretary. "Mr. Wallace has just started a new novel." "Great!" said the voice from Cincinnati, 0. "I'll hold the wire till he's through."

Let us take a peep into the Wallace phrontisterion. We must be careful not to enter in the D. B. Wyndham Lewis spirit, or we may rouse Mr. Wallace to biting sarcasm. The Wallace Collection is run on strictly business lines. Which is a pity, for the very introduction of the business element is tantamount to a sacrifice of quality. But Mr. Wallace prefers quantity to quality, and the critic will have him follow in the steps of Dumas. "The Wallace library is extensive, especially on crime subjects." Yes, decidedly that is a selling-point. Apparently, if Mr. Wallace cannot lay his fingers on certain details, reference works in public libraries needs must be consulted. Better still! A dictaphone stands in the corner. Of course it may not actually occupy that position: but there is a dictaphone, and in detective stories the corner is always the position allocated. It is rumoured that there are innumerable files with cross references and subsections which play a not inconspicuous part in the great fight against time. Mr. Wallace has a stenographer: now and then he calls him a typist, but he will probably hear about that. This stenographer is one of the champions of Great Britain—and he would need to be. In and out and round about the sanctum creep strange men. "It is no new experience for me," Mrs. Wallace has admitted, "to come face to face with a criminal on the staircase. Down-and-outs, hoboes, people-with-stories-to-tell, and others keep calling on Edgar, and the result of their visits is sometimes manifest in articles, sometimes books, and occasionally in plays." Does it not seem infra dig. that criminals who can always turn a dishonest penny should have preferred this labour exchange?

Mrs. Wallace is the lady with the blue pencil. She sins on the side of the angels. Work for the day usually begins at seven in the morning: during the rush season at four or even at midnight. It is alleged that all Mr. Wallace's plots are thought out before the dictaphone is used: and that he does not write on the spur of the moment.

Mr. Wallace's work is curiously varied, both in theme and in style. He is a most unequal writer. "When he is good, he is very very good, but when he is bad he is horrid." On the credit side he has these virtues:

1. His narrative is straightforward, and there is no padding, and no nonsense.
2. He is genuinely exciting, and relies on no artifices for his creation of atmosphere. He follows the old saw, Ars est celare artem.
3. His humour is never strained. "The Sparrow" and "J. G. Reeder" are inimitable characters, naturally humorous.
4. He has an inside knowledge of Scotland Yard and police methods.
5. He is familiar with the lingo of crooks.

On the other hand:

1. He is too fond of "the most-unlikely-person" theme.
2. Impossibilities and improbabilities occur too frequently.
3. He is by no means word-perfect. He calls a napkin a serviette, and is guilty of a phrase like "she shrugged milky shoulders." His grammar, also, is not unimpeachable.
4. His sensationalism is often extremely crude, and not in perfect taste.

Mr. Arnold Bennett finds one very grave defect in Edgar Wallace:

He is content with society as it is. He parades no subversive opinions. He is "correct." Now, it is very well known that all novelists who have depicted contemporary society, and who have lived, abound in subversive opinions. Look at Defoe, Swift and Fielding. Feel their lash. Remember the whips and scorpions of Dickens, and the effort of even the Agag-footed Thackeray to destroy utterly the popular convention of the romantical hero. And Hardy's terrible rough-hewing of the divinity that shapes our ends.… It may be counted a maxim that good modern literature is never made out of correct sentiments. If there are exceptions to this rule they must be extremely few.… Perhaps I am unfair to Edgar Wallace. Perhaps in earlier years he has chastised society with intent to be immortal.

This criticism seems to be very wide of the mark. It is absurd to require the detective novelist to be a social reformer. Besides, Mr. Bennett starts from the assumption that society in Mr. Wallace's novels is his idea of actual Society! If Mr. Bennett does not make this assumption, one asks whether he can force us to attach any substantial meaning whatsoever to his objection. For if he does not, it would seem he finds fault with Mr. Wallace for not being in his writing a social reformer as well as a writer of detective stories—a conclusion which cannot cast any reflection, whether for good or ill, on his detective stories as such. As it is, the joyous absence of any subversive opinions might well be considered a merit instead of a defect.

For convenience' sake we might classify the Wallace novels in five main groups. Perhaps I should admit that, as I cannot claim to be a member of any Edgar Wallace Club, I have read only a fraction of the grand total.

1. The Four Just Men Series. (The Four Just Men, The Four Just Men of Cordova, The Law of the Four Just Men, The Three Just Men.) In these stories murder is regularly committed from the highest motives. The Four Just Men form a Crusade to rid the world of its most noxious members. They are the champions of moral as opposed to legal justice. Thus the police, as the upholders of an inadequate system, become the villains. The Four Just Men began badly, for they put to sleep a "fairly harmless Secretary of State." Of course, it cannot be said they did not warn him, but the unfortunate politician had to think of the Press. The quartet improved fortunately with experience, and ran a highly successful Co-operative Murder Campaign. One notes the close affinity of this series to the Arsene Lupin stories.
2. The Police novels, such as The Crimson Circle, The Ringer, The Squesker, The Terror, etc. It is here that Mr. Wallace overdoes "the most unlikely person" theme, the detective finally emerging as the villain or vice versa. Gaston Leroux's Le Mystere de la Chambre Jaune is parent to this engaging family.
3. Just thrillers, which need no further comment. The Green Archer, The Avenger, The Black Abbot, The India Rubber Men, The Sinister Man, The Yellow Snake, Room 13, The Clue of the New Pin, etc.
4. The J. G. Reeder stories—The Mind of J. G. Reeder, The Orator.
5. The Sanders of the River stories—Sanders of the River, Bosambo of the River, Bones, Lieutenant Bones, Bones in London, etc.…

Mr. Wallace's detective dramas such as The Ringer, The Terror, and The Flying Squad, caught the public favour; and the West-End, thereupon, suffered from a spate of police plays. (On the Spot was more an amusing satire on Chicago than an honest detective play.) Then followed a tendency to substitute for sheer excitement social propaganda, as in Mr. Vosper's People Like Us, or humour, as in Sorry You 've Been Troubledl …

The detective play may be either a thriller pure and simple like The Flying Fool, The House of Danger, etc., or it may make some pretence of containing a problem, in which latter case only one motif is virtually possible, that of the most unlikely person. Mr. Wallace again shows his preference for the latter, as in The Ringer.