Review: The Crimson Circle

The Crimson Circle by Edgar Wallace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A rip-roaring suspense thriller in which a blackmailer, extortionist and murderer is pursued by a stolid Scotland Yard detective and a private investigator who is more the policeman's colleague than his rival.

Wealthy men are receiving notes marked with a crimson circle, telling them to pay large amounts of money or be killed. Several are killed - to encourage the others - and much blame falls on the Scotland Yard man for not preventing the deaths, or making much progress on identifying the criminal. Because it is, mainly, a single criminal, who finds out people's guilty secrets and uses a carrot-and-stick approach to get them to do key elements of the crimes, without being able to recognize each other or him thanks to strict compartmentalization. It reminds me of a classic science fiction story about what's basically a prediction of Taskrabbit, which is used to get people to do acts, innocent in themselves, that add up to criminality or resistance to authority - though here the stooges are usually fully aware that their actions are criminal or contributing to a crime. (If anyone knows the story I'm thinking of - which could be by Simak or Heinlein or someone of that era, though it might be one of the cyberpunks, maybe even Cory Doctorow - please let me know in the comments.)

Weaving through the narrative is a young woman, who seems at various times to be a thief, one of the stooges, perhaps a murderer, maybe even the Crimson Circle. A young man is in love with her despite himself, which was the aspect of the story I found weakest. Wallace's romances are generally not well motivated or well developed, and this is no exception. The young man's father is one of the early victims, and seemingly the only one whose death is really regrettable, extremely wealthy or powerful men being what they are.

The stakes are raised when the Crimson Circle threatens a dozen cabinet ministers, and the policeman, who has just been basically fired for incompetence, is kept on in order to work alongside the private detective at the latter's insistence. The final reveal is a big twist, and makes sense of something that seemed a departure from the usual Wallace approach when it first appeared. All throughout, it seemed like people knew things they shouldn't, but the twist explains a lot (not all) of this.

There's plenty of tension and drama and action along the way, and all in all, it's a strong book of its type, namely highly-coloured pulp thriller. No wonder so many of Wallace's books were filmed.

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