The Dark Eyes of London by Edgar WallaceMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another classic mystery from Edgar Wallace, and like all of the others I've read, not written to an obvious formula, even though he wrote so quickly.
This one involves a gang of blind men (the "Dark Eyes" of the title). There is a lot of imposture, identity concealment, suspense, and even romance, which is more fully developed than a lot of Wallace's romances, in that the couple at least spend a significant amount of time together.
However, it was the romance that gave me the element that I disliked about the book. It's between the Scotland Yard inspector and his secretary, who he admires not only because she's good-looking (though she is) but because she's intelligent and capable and, he thinks, a better detective than he is. But when he finally proposes, he doesn't like the idea of her working; he wants her to stay home and look after his flat, which is already perfectly well looked after by his manservant and cook. (Yes, a Scotland Yard inspector in the 1920s apparently made enough to have two servants.) I know, attitudes were different then, but usually Wallace doesn't just buy into the zeitgeist in this way. And it's not as if men of that generation never thought women should work or develop their natural gifts. World War I had accelerated a trend of opening up new options for women that had been around since before Victoria, and World War II was soon to accelerate it again.
Apart from that, it's a clever and thrilling mystery with hairsbreadth escapes (sometimes through intelligent preparation), kidnapping, conspiracy and fraud as well as murder, and plenty of period setting to enjoy. Sure, the same few cast members keep on coincidentally meeting, but I should probably give up complaining about that, because it seems everyone managed their plots that way a hundred years ago.
Even with the woman's-place-is-in-the-home foolishness, it's still a solid piece of work.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment