The Lone Wolf A Melodrama by Louis Joseph VanceMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a difficult one to rate.
Does it do the main job of a thriller, to keep the action moving and the reader engaged? It does, or did for me, despite the sometimes dire melodrama of the prose:
But as minutes sped it became apparent that there was to be no renewed attempt upon his life for the time being. The pursuers could afford to wait. They could afford to ape the patience of Death itself.
And it came then to Lanyard that he drove no more alone: Death was his passenger.
Is the main character relatable, despite being a criminal? He is; we're first introduced to him as a confused five-year-old being brought to France, apparently from England, by a mysterious man who places him with an uncaring foster-family who run a restaurant and lodging-house. They give him a new name, and he forgets his old one, which we don't learn (in this book, at least; his origin is not yet revealed), and exploit his labour once he's old enough to work. He largely educates himself, and as a teenager talks a criminal who stays at the lodging-house into taking him along as a kind of apprentice. This is highly successful, and by the time his criminal mentor dies (of natural causes), he is an expert housebreaker.
But he doesn't stay a criminal. Most of the book is taken up by his adventures after he decides to reform. Like Arsene Lupin (who is name-checked) and the less-known Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces, he does so because he falls in love with a woman he happens to encounter. (After all, what other motivation could a criminal have for reforming? Let's not bring religion into this; that would be completely at odds with the spirit of the times.)
"Happens to encounter" is a phrase that could be used at least five times of events in this book, which relies heavily on coincidental meetings to advance its plot. This is one of its several weaknesses, alongside melodramatic and overwrought prose, a weak romance plot (the Lone Wolf falls for the woman almost as soon as they meet and without actually knowing anything about her, and they don't spend much time together before she reciprocates; there's no real development of the relationship before or after their declarations to each other), and occasional casual racism against both black people and Jews. (view spoiler)
Overall, for me, the weaknesses outweighed the strengths, and it's not a recommendation, even though it did keep me engaged to the end. Apparently afterwards the hero becomes some kind of operative, like the later character The Saint, but I'm not interested enough to follow his further adventures.
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