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Edgar Wallace
Over a period of time, men disappear, and later their heads are found. Meanwhile a young actress in a small part in a film on location, is disturbed by the actions of the owner of the place where they are filming. A detective comes to investigate, and finds many puzzling things going on. Several of the characters are suspicious, in one way or another, and as the plot unfolds, it grips you. Edgar Wallaces The Avenger is a perfectly fine example of what a page-turning thriller looked like, early in the last century. What Edgar Wallace has over modern writers is the willingness to insert a girl-snatching, sapient orangutan in his plot. Surely the seeds for his King-Kong screenplay can be found here.
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Yet another collection of linked short stories from Oppenheim. By chance a young man and woman meet and set up an agency to aid Scotland Yard, but is romance in the air? This story deals with a young man and a young woman who make an informal partnership in criminal investigation. This whodunit murder mysteries collection brings to you some of Oppenheims finest murder mysteries to keep you at your toes: The Evil Shepherd Murder at Monte Carlo, or Wolves Amongst the Honey, The Glenlitten Murder and others. Phillips Oppenheim was an internationally renowned author of mystery and espionage thrillers. His novels and short stories have all the elements of blood-racing adventure and intrigue and are precursors of modern-day spy fictions.
The Battle of Basinghall Street
E. Phillips Oppenheim
The story of a young man, Lord Sandbrook, who takes revenge against the directors of a company he holds responsible for the deaths of his father and mother. The battlefield is Basinghall Street, where the offices of Woolito, Limited, are situated. A textile business is the center of strange machinations suicides, failures, conflagrations, disaster to various directors, finally a raid on the stock, and the president is a ruined man. In this story Mr. Oppenheim takes a vacation from international intrigue in a Monte Carlo setting and devotes himself to describing a big business battle in London. The story is told with the usual Oppenheim flourish, a great deal of action, many details of personality and adventures.
Guy Boothby
This novel, filled with lots of action and romance, talks about the exploits of an attractive criminal mastermind who steals the heart of the main character of a fairy tale. The heroine is a first class woman. She is smart, beautiful, commanding and respected. She is all that a leader should be, demonstrates courage in the face of danger, and has never even been portrayed in any way not ideal.
J.S. Fletcher
The main character in the story is a detective story. He is investigating a mysterious murder. Detective and young Richard Marchmont soon discover that there is a triangle of financial intrigue that needs to be unraveled before the truth can be found out, and that in the hour of crime, not one suspicious person was hiding near the Marchmont house, but several.
S.S. Van Dine
The Benson Case is the first case, the first detective from the Philo Vens series. Again, we are dealing with an amateur detective who has his own Watson and Lestrade, a first-person narrator who is present at all events and a good acquaintance of Vance, the New York City Police Attorney Markham. In this book, he still does not particularly believe in Vances ability to psychologically unwind potential victims of murder suspects.
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Guy Ducaine is a recent graduate of Oxford University. Through a series of unfortunate events he is penniless and starving in the rural town of Brasters. Seeking to make a few shillings, he schedules a lecture on local history. On the same time, Lord Rowchester invites the officer and explorer Colonel Mostyn Ray to the village to speak. Ducaines lecture fails and he returns to his small house and collapses from hunger. Found there by Ray, and Rowchesters lovely daughter, Lady Angela, they revive him and set in motion a complicated, entertaining, and devious plot. With many twists and turns Ducaine eventually works as secretary to a War Preparations Committee which is chronically leaking plans to the enemy and saves the nation!
Edgar Wallace
Best remembered for penning the screenplay for the classic film King Kong, author Edgar Wallace was an astoundingly popular luminary in the action-adventure genre in the early twentieth century. The Big Four is a story packed with intrigue, treachery, assassinations, and machinations, and it highlights Wallaces unmatched skill in setting a pulse-pounding pace. Wallace was an extremely prolific writer who wrote over 175 novels, plus numerous plays, essays and journalistic articles. During the peak of his success during the 1920s, it was said that a quarter of all books read in England were written by him. Many of his novels were made into films and TV dramas.