I read this in the 1967 John Long hardback edition. It really took me back in time to be reading a novel in large crown 8vo, a format that now seems to be reserved for "novelty" publications -- often to make a short novel look longer, as per some of the works of Nicholas Sparks. Of course, back in the day, novels were generally shorter: this novel clocks in at just under 60,000 words, and tells its story perfectly well within that compass. As I've whinged frequently here and elsewhere, while I've nothing against longer novels, I find it a shame that nowadays it seems to be an imperative that even straightforward popular novels be 120,000 words upwards.But enough of that . . .Johnny Gray is let out of Dartmoor having served a couple of years for a crime he may or may not have committed. He goes to rejoin his mentor Peter Kane, a retired gentleman crook whose daughter Marney is Johnny's beloved. But he arrives at Kane's home to discover that mere hours before Marney married another, supposedly a Canadian officer but in fact John Legge, the Big Printer, whose forged banknotes are flooding the UK and the Continent. The marriage of this scoundrel to Marney has been engineered by John's crooked father Emanuel as part of his planned vengeance upon Peter, whom he believes bilked him out of the proceeds of a heist and shopped him to the cops -- like Johnny, Emanuel is not long out of Dartmoor but after a far stiffer sentence.Johnny and Peter must somehow extricate themselves and Marney from this predicament. The plot thickens when someone shoots John Legge near-fatally in Room 13 of the notorious Highlow Club, where all the worst crooks of London congregate to discuss their nefarious doings and plan new ones . . .A nicely twisty tale, tautly told, this is the first book in the J.G. Reeder series. Reeder is a reclusive, middle-aged-going-on-elderly, eccentric character who, like so many detectives, hides his intellectual stature behind a mask of blandness. This, at least, is the version of him that appears in the other Reeder books and in the TV series based thereon; and it's also the Reeder we recognize in this first novel until, toward the end, it's revealed this character isn't Reeder at all! I don't know why Wallace decided to violate the back-story for the later volumes; perhaps it was simply that his audience found the false Reeder a more interesting character than the real one. For the most part he has a fairly peripheral role in Room 13, coming into his own only in the latter part of the book.Edgar Wallace novels seem rather rare objects in the US -- at least among the libraries of Passaic County, NJ, which between them could muster just two, this and Flat 2 (which I'll be reading shortly). I guess I'd better start trawling eBay or something if I want any more . . .
