In Which My Edgar Wallace Amensia Is Cured......Unfortunately

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

You may recall that when mentioning that next book on great ebook unread was The Keepers Of The Kings Peace by Edgar Wallace I said two particular things. One was that I'd no idea of the plot (as the book was free and by a writer I'd heard of I was happy to obtain it) and that the last Edgar Wallace book I'd read was so long ago (decades in fact - the nineteen eighties) I had forgotten what my opinion of it was.

Well that's now changed. Perhaps it was literary shock therapy but everything bar the title of the book I'd read in the eighties (bought for twenty pence in Wanstead Library....I remember that now!) has come back.

The Keepers Of The Kings Peace was written in 1917 and is part of the Saunders of the River series about a commissioner of a British African colony. That sentence alone should tell you where its political thoughts lie. Essentially it's a group of short stories showing how Saunders and his lieutenant "Bones" deal with various problems whilst ruling "the natives" but always having time for a spot of tiffin

And as the above paragraph suggests it's racist in the patronising "We've taken over your country and will now teach you our superior way of life" sort of way. The one white woman in the story is described as more beautiful than the native women and in most of the stories the dealings between the British and the local people are really like between master and servant.

The "N" word is used three times though to be fair twice by a villain.

But even if we leave aside the imperialism and racism (!!) the book also jogged my memory as to why I didn't like the thriller I'd read all those (many) years ago. For whilst I wouldn't go as far as to say it was dull it's only a few notches above that. Pedestrian is the best word to describe it when I would have been perfectly happy if it had just been on an urban speed limit.

What it reminded me of was that the thriller I'd read had no nuance, no danger, no thrill. A problem was seen,and dealt with and that was it. Exactly the same thing here. There was no sense that "the British" were going to emerge from this damaged in any way. It was just so predictable.

So then, a book for Edgar Wallace fans or those Brexiteers who think that a better union than the EU is to create a British Empire Mark 2 starting with Spain. Everyone else should avoid.

Whether this is because of Edgar Wallace's reputation as a writer who churned books like factories produce cars I don't know. What I do know is that compared to the other writer I've read with a similar reputation for producing many books, George Simenon, Edgar Wallace trails far,far behind.

Perhaps some memories are best left forgotten.

The next ebook from the great unread is When The Sleeper Awakes by H G Wells. My view on H G Wells is mixed but what makes this book interesting is that I never heard of it before downloading it.

Until the next time.

Until the