Mystery and Crime Wallace, Edgar: Mr J.G. Reeder Omnibus. v6. 28 Feb 2015

[HarryT]

Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was a prolific British crime writer, journalist, and playwright who, although relatively unknown today, was massively popular in his time. He wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and countless articles for newspapers and magazines. More than 160 movies have been made of his novels - more than of 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.

This is an omnibus edition of all Wallace's books and short stories featuring his most popular detective, "Mr. J.G. Reeder". The books contained in this volume are:

- Room 13
- The Mind of Mr J.G. Reeder
- Terror Keep
- Red Aces
- Mr J.G. Reeder Returns
- The Guv'nor
- The Man Who Passed

Enjoy!

EDIT: 28 Feb 2015

Thoroughly proof-read and revised. Added curly quotes and fixed lots of errors. I would now regard this as a finished work, so please let me know if you find any remaining errors. Uploaded v6.

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[happy_terd]

Awesome. I can't wait until I get home to download the next HarryT collection.

[GA Russell]

Harry, what sort of detective stories are they - more like Agatha Christie than Dashiell Hammett?

[HarryT]

Nothing remotely like Agatha Christie . They're difficult to categorise, but I guess you could call them "police procedural" stories, mainly set in "gangland" London in the first decades of the 20th century.

[GA Russell]

Well if they were so popular in their day, I'll look forward to giving them a try.

[Bev]

Some of the stories are straight Detective stories and some are typical 20's Thrillers.They were very popular right into the 1970's. Thames TV in the UK did 16 one hour episodes of the stories between 1969 and 1971, I remember watching them when I was a child and thinking they were pretty spiffy. I usually find myself curled up in front of a log fire at Xmas re-reading "Terror Keep", now I live in Australia I have to forgo the Log fire at Xmas but I still do the re-read.

[Polyglot27]

This J.G. Reeder Omnibus is one of the most unusual and delightful of detective stories I have ever read. The hero is a middle aged detective who gives the impression that he is meek and not very smart when in fact he has a most powerful intellect. He almost never gets taken in and is in control all the time. In one story he even gets the girl in the end. Thank you HarryT.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Polyglot27

The hero is a middle aged detective who gives the impression that he is meek and not very smart when in fact he has a most powerful intellect. He almost never gets taken in and is in control all the time.

Sounds like Columbo

[HarryT]

J.G. Reeder is more like a very shy, retiring, British civil servant.

Columbo, of course, was invented by R. Austin Freeman . Freeman invented the "inverted detective story", in which the reader knows all the details of the crime at the start of the story, and then watches the detective try to figure it out. Several of Freeman's "Dr. Thorndyke" books are inverted detective stories, just like Columbo.

[Polyglot27]

Interesting that Freeman was the one who "invented" the "inverted detective story" in the West. All the Chinese detective stories from the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties were "inverted detective stories". The Judge Dee stories by the Dutch sinologist and diplomat Van Gulik were inspired by them in fact.
Funny I did not notice they were "inverted detective stories" when I first read the Dr Thorndyke books.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Polyglot27

Funny I did not notice they were "inverted detective stories" when I first read the Dr Thorndyke books.

Only a small number of them are. The first ones are in "The Singing Bone", published in 1912. This is in Volume 2 of my "Dr Thorndyke Omnibus" series here at MR.

[Conor]

The preface to Vol 2 is devoted to this.

[HarryT]

Thoroughly proof-read and revised. Added curly quotes and fixed lots of errors. I would now regard this as a finished work, so please let me know if you find any remaining errors. Uploaded v6.