Review: Barbara on Her Own

Barbara on Her Own by Edgar Wallace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Save the business" is a genre, or at least a plot type, and in the right hands it can be compelling. Wallace's are the right hands, even though he was notoriously bad at business himself and constantly in debt, and this genial comedy proves it.

Barbara works as a secretary for her godfather, Mr Maber of Maber & Maber's Department Store, an old and fossilized institution that is about to be bought by their competitor across the road. Before the sale can go through, Mr Maber gets drunk on Boat Race Night (having, in his university days, rowed stroke for Cambridge) and is arrested and imprisoned for biting a policeman. Naturally, nobody can know about this, and he gives Barbara his power of attorney, assuming she will complete the sale negotiations.

Instead, she decides to shock the business into life, to advertise and hold a sale (two things the store has never done before). She knows a young man, who is in love with her despite her discouragement, who sells advertising space; she buys some. One of the executives becomes an ally, the other an antagonist. Various past indiscretions come into play, people leap to conclusions (Barbara has married Mr Maber! Barbara has done away with Mr Maber!), the competitor incites his subordinates to commit minor crimes, farcical consequences ensue... it's all good fun.

The ending, I felt, was weaker than the rest of the book, wrapping up too much too abruptly. But the journey there I thoroughly enjoyed. It's like a P.G. Wodehouse book written by Edgar Wallace, which means middle-class people with jobs instead of upper-class people with private incomes are the participants in the farcical shenanigans.

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