Review: The Clue of the Silver Key

The Clue of the Silver Key by Edgar Wallace
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A thrilling piece of pulp writing, with plenty of mystery, reversals, barely-averted disasters and multiple crimes (several murders, blackmail, forgery and embezzlement). It has one of Wallace's characteristic capable and independent women as a secondary detective, and she (eventually, after a lot of mysterious concealment of what she's even thinking) reveals several important clues that allow the official detective, Surefoot Smith of Scotland Yard, to break the case. Even after he knows whodunnit, though, he still has to catch the criminal, and there are some tense moments as he strives to do so and falls into danger himself.

Unfortunately, this whole section is rife with coincidences, some of which help and others of which hinder the protagonists, and because I prefer a lot less coincidence in my fiction, I dropped it down a star from where it would otherwise sit. If that doesn't bother you, and you enjoy pulp action, this could well be the book for you.

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