The Face in the Night
by Edgar Wallace
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Audrey Bedford, a small town girl, goes to London and is arrested for stealing the Queen of Finland's necklace. She realizes immediately that her sister is the guilty party, but family loyalty leads her to accept the charge and she does the time rather than implicate her sister. Once released from prison she takes the only job she can find and ends up embroiled in a case of murder, robbery and stolen diamonds. Because of her past she can't afford to let events unfold as they will, to keep show more her freedom she must be an active participant in getting to the bottom of this mystery. show lessTags
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Within a day of abandoning her chicken farm and moving to London to seek her sister, Audrey Bedford is caught passing the Queen of Finland's stolen necklace, and allows herself to be sent to prison for a year rather than implicate her guilty sibling. Once released, she takes a position as scribe to the mysterious Mr. Malpas, who lurks in his electrically-automated apartment and only allows himself to be seen from across a darkened room. When Malpas' neighbor, the Australian Mr. Marshalt is murdered in the lair, Audrey is enmeshed in a tangle of lost diamonds, a long-burning feud, the fate of her father, and the affections of Captain Dick Shannon, Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard.
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526+ Works 10,120 Members
Among the most prolific of all authors of adventure fiction was the redoubtable Edgar Wallace. Born in London, Wallace received his early education at St. Peter's School and the Board School. Wallace served in the Royal West Kent Regiment in England and later as part of the Medical Staff Corps stationed in South Africa. During World War I, Wallace show more acted as a special interrogator for the War Office. As was the case with a number of successful popular authors, Wallace experienced a rich and diverse life before turning to professional writing. From 1886 to the 1930s, he worked in a printing shop, a shoe shop, and a rubber factory, and served as a merchant sailor and milk deliverer. Beginning in 1899, Wallace became a journalist and wrote variously for the London Daily Mail and the Rand Daily News, among others; he also worked with the racing periodicals, having founded two of them---Bibury's Weekly and R. E. Walton's Weekly. Like Sax Rohmer, Wallace earned a fortune from his writings, yet, because of a lack of business sense and a tendency to overspend, he died in debt. A prodigious writer of fiction, Wallace published, over the course of his professional life, some 173 books and wrote 17 plays. Many of his adventure narratives featured elements of crime or mystery, but they all thrived on action. Although Wallace's handling of plot was superb and he was respected for his ability to blend suspense with humor, he was less successful with his characters, who tended to be two-dimensional and stereotyped. One of his early crime adventures, The Four Just Men (1906), introduced what was to become a trademark for Wallace---lurid sensationalism coupled with dramatic violence. Wallace published in a wide range of genres, including poetry, short fiction, autobiography, and epic political history. Regrettably, much of what he wrote has lapsed into obscurity today. As sometimes is the problem with popular fiction, perhaps it was too hurriedly written---too intimately connected with its contemporary audience---to stand the ultimate test of time. But Wallace's work was highly influential, especially in the American pulp magazine markets of the Great Depression, and stands today, despite its many flaws, as some of the most effective literary adventures ever written. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Doubleday Crime Club (1929.42)
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Common Knowledge
- Original title
- The Face in the Night
- Alternate titles
- The Diamond Men; The Ragged Princess
- Original publication date
- 1924
- Related movies
- The Diamond Man (1924 | IMDb); The Malpas Mystery (1960 | IMDb); Double Face (1969 | IMDb)
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Statistics
- Members
- 63
- Popularity
- 490,214
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.67)
- Languages
- 7 — Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 24
- ASINs
- 7
