A TRIO OF THRILLERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19720, 20 August 1927, Page 7 (Supplement)

A TRIO OF THRILLERS.

" The Man Who was Nobody," by Edgar Wallace (Ward, Lock and Co). " The Week-end Mystery," by Robert A. Simon (Collins). " Blue Murder," by Edmund Snell (Fisher Unwin). " She could not believe it. The unreality of it was terrible. It was almost laughable." This, we are told, is what Marjorie Stedman felt, on the morning of her wedding to " The Man Who Was Nobody." At any rate it exactly expresses the feelings of one reader of Edgar Wallace's latest effort. Here we have all the stock types and situations straight from a Surrey-side melodrama—the adventuress, the villain, the hero, the fair young " girl," and the good old man, even to the mortgage on the estate and the heroine's noble self-sacrifice. Impersonation and bigamy are the favourite pastimes of villainy, but in spite of their temporary triumph virtue romps home a winner. Apparently Edgar Wallace, unlike Abraham Lincoln, is persuaded that it is possible to fool all the people all the time.

Jimmy Wrome's nerves were upset over a frustrated love-affair. So he consulted Dr. Farrigan who gave him a novel prescription, " Detective Stories. Read one daily until relieved. Dose may be increased if desired." So successful was the treatment that Jimmie, on being invited to the houso of the millionaire, Leed Payne, after some trouble solved the problem of Payne's death which, it need hardly be said, took place as soon as the house-party was in full swing. It is a wonder, by the way, that millionaires have not learned by this time how fatal to themselves it is to fill the house with guests. The book is. distinguished by a pleasant humour, as witness the amended Shakespearean quotation describing the " modern" novel—" Vermin in stones, crooks in the running brooks and sex in everything." * With the keen competition for titles of " thrillers," it is surprising that "Blue Murder" has not been snapped up long ago. However, Mr. Edmund Snell makes the most of it in his story which tells how Karl Ahlborg in his villa at Rapallo, guarded by a pack of savage Alsatians, manufactures the deadly Pocket Death, in the form of a Blue Ray which reduces its victims to unrecognisable powder in a very short space of time. There is spirited bidding among the Great Powers for the pretty little invention, and Alan Dighton, the fair-haired English hero, though si new recruit to the Sccict Service proves too much for the representatives of all the other foreign powers, not to mention the Lizard, the mysterious masked villain. " Not the highest form of literature," as the publisher candidly confesses, "but a thriller of the fust degree." "