The Terror (Detective Club Crime Classics)

by Edgar Wallace

Martin Edwards (Introduction)

The sensational novel which launched Collins’ Detective Story Club in 1929 was by Edgar Wallace, who wrote more crime stories in the 1920s, and more films, than any other author. This new edition of The Terror, with its original jacket artwork, also includes another classic Wallace text, White Face.

A dangerous gang of criminals is imprisoned after a daring robbery, although the ringleader who masterminded the crime disappears with the loot. Finally released after ten years behind bars, they are out for vengeance on the man who betrayed them, and the trail leads to a lonely house haunted by organ music and the spectre of a hooded figure who prowls its dark corridors.

The Terror began life as a stage play, then a film, and finally the book that began Collins’ Detective Story Club in July 1929.
This new edition also includes White Face, the other crime novel Wallace adapted from one of his own plays. A doctor finds a man murdered in a seedy part of London. The police suspect a notorious master of disguise known as ‘White Face’, and the doctor enlists a reporter to help him track down and unmask the elusive killer.

This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by award-winning crime novelist and mystery genre expert Martin Edwards, author of the acclaimed The Golden Age of Murder.

• ISBN13: 9780008137571
• Publish Date: 25 February 2016 (first published 12 April 2013)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 1 September 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins Crime Club
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[brokentune]

Ah, this was such a nice surprise...there are two stories in this book The Terror and White Face.
I seriously should maybe think about reading book descriptions rather than just be seduced by the pretty covers of books.

Anyway, The Terror was your typical Edgar Wallace thriller focused on madness, crime, and darkest London. To me Wallace didn't write noir as much as a special kind of Gothic crime, including damsels in distress, castles, secret passages, ... oh, and a mad monk.

Yes, the plot is silly, the characters are two-dimensional, and many of the other aspect are utterly ridiculous, but this is just the sort of crime caper one sometimes needs. So, what if it made me laugh out loud that one of the characters suffers from insanity for only exactly 2 hours every day? (Or was it 2 hours of sanity? Does it matter?)

I really liked this one. It reminded me a lot of the German screen adaptations of Wallace's work - they are hilariously, charmingly.....dated but they are great guilty pleasures.

White Face took a different approach to the "typical" Wallace story. Yes, this story is also based on organised crime at it's heart, but this one here seemed to be a lot close some of the stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. There is a great twist, but there are also elements that seems to portray some of the crimes as the characters only choice, so almost ask for sympathy from the reader.

It was an interesting change from other works by Wallace that I am familiar with and I love that the story was included in this book (edited by Martin Edwards) but the story was also quite long and drawn out, which didn't work well for me.