'The Sooper' and Others

A selection of Edgar Wallace's most brilliant and entertaining crime stories.

Few writers can have had such a varied experience of life as Edgar Wallace. Brought up by a Billingsgate fish-porter and his wife, he worked while still in his teens as a ship's cook and a captain's boy on a Grimbsy trawler, a shoe salesman and a newspaper boy. Later, his career in the Army Medical Corps and in Fleet Street further enriched his fund of anecdotes and salty language. He also became a passionate gambler, especially on the racecourse, frequenting that twilight zone populated by fascinating and plausible characters, one-quarter straight, three-quarters crook.

It was this zest for experience that made Wallace such a brilliant story-teller, with a sharp ear for dialogue, a profound knowledge of people from all walks of life, and a journalist's nose for a good story. He wrote hundreds of stories, but those grouped around the characters in this selection are probably the most enduringly appealing. In these pages you will meet 'The Sooper,' Wallace's thoroughly down-to-earth police hero; super-sleuth Angel, Esquire; the Brigand, a charming conman; the Ringer, a classic hero-villain; and many more. Here are stories of confidence tricks on transatlantic liners and forgery in Notting Hill, of blackmail, murder, and theft. For anyone with a taste for crime fiction this selection is a feast of first-class exciting reading.