Review: The Duke in the Suburbs

The Duke in the Suburbs by Edgar Wallace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not a typical Edgar Wallace. He mostly wrote mysteries and thrillers, and while there are some moments of action, this is mostly a comedy. For me, quite a successful comedy, too.

For reasons that are never explained, presumably because it makes no sense at all, the Duc de Montvilliers has decided to rent a suburban villa in a quiet middle-class neighbourhood in London. He's not an English duke, but a (presumably purely nominal) French duke, descendant of refugees from the Terror, born and raised in England. He has plenty of money, because he's been to the US and struck silver, along with his American friend Hank, who's also living with him in the suburban house (no, not like that, this is 1909). While in America, he lived a rough-and-tumble life and was the cause of a ruffian being jailed, and this ruffian, having by some pull and corruption got out of jail, is now trying to hunt him down.

Meanwhile, by coincidence, the uncle of his neighbour (a young woman who he falls in love with and proposes to almost immediately on meeting her), a schemer named Sir Harry Tanneur, is trying, by completely dodgy means, to wrest the silver mine from him in a US court. Sir Harry's lawyer there cunningly fulfils the letter of the law by advertising the action in three small local newspapers, but then has an agent buy up the entire run of all three papers so the duke has no chance of finding out in practice, since if he defends the claim he will definitely win. However, the lawyer sends the clippings to Sir Harry, and by a series of highly unlikely coincidences one of them ends up being read out at a parish concert, alerting the duke, who rushes to the US and crushes the fraudulent claim.

This annoys Sir Harry significantly. His family were actually tanners, surnamed Tanner, but when they made a lot of money in the 19th century changed it to Tanneur, presumably to rhyme with "poseur," which is what Sir Harry is. He's busily engaged in producing false documentation of ancient and exalted genealogy. He deeply resents the duke legally asserting his right to his own property and scotching Sir Harry's attempt to pinch it, and considers it cause for a vendetta.

The two men then buy newspapers in order to campaign against one another, and the suburbanites, who are amusingly characterized, divide into factions. The characters are wonderful in general: the urbane duke, a mixture of Eton old boy and Wild West adventurer; his phlegmatic buddy Hank, who shows a lot more sophistication than the usual stock American character; the permanently broke but always genial Lord Tupping, known to one and all as "Tuppy"; the self-deceiving and bitter Sir Harry; the absurd would-be detective. It's unfortunate, though, that the love interest doesn't have a lot of personality, which is a flaw in an otherwise strong and amusing book.

I think this must have been one of the books Wallace dictated, and whoever transcribed and/or edited it was weak on punctuation. The comma usage is erratic and frequently incorrect, apostrophes are missing, closing quotation marks get missed (or put where they don't belong), and the duke's American nickname is spelled "Dukey" or "Jukey" seemingly at random. It's the kind of book that makes me want to produce my own edition, so that it can shine as it deserves.

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