The daughters of the night

PREFACE by Giancarlo RossiniBritish novelist, playwright and journalist who produced famous detective and suspense novels and was in his day the "king" of the modern thriller. Wallace's literary output - 175 books, 24 plays and countless articles and review sketches - undermined his reputation as a fresh and original writer. Furthermore, the author was a staunch supporter of Victorian and early Edwardian values ​​and customs, which are now considered politically incorrect in some respects. In England in the 1920s, Wallace was said to be the second largest salesman after the Bible. "This little autobiography is in itself a tribute to the system we live in. Edgar Wallace was born in Greenwich in 1875, the same year as the creator of Tarzan's novels, Edgar Rice Burroughs. He was raised as an adopted son in Clara's family and George Freeman, a London fish porter. Her parents were actors, Polly Richards, born Mary Jane Blair, and Richard Horatio Edgar Marriott, who used Walter Wallace's false name in birth records. It is possible that Polly came up with the name to give his son a (fictitious) father. The Freemans, who received a payment of 5 shillings a week for child support, had already raised ten children. They eventually adopted their adopted child when it was discovered that Polly did not he could no longer afford to pay his maintenance. At the age of 12, the young Wallace dropped out of school and took menial jobs before joining the army at age 18. From 1893 to 1896 he served vice in the Royal West Kent Regiment. In 1896 Wallace was sent to South Africa, where he was in the Medical Staff Corps. During this time he became acquainted with the Reverend William Shaw Caldecott and Mrs. Marion Caldecott, who was a writer and willing to help Wallace in his literary aspirations. Wallace began collaborating with various magazines and wrote war poems, later collected in The Mission That Failed (1898) and other volumes. After his discharge in 1899, Wallace became a correspondent for Reuters and the London Daily Mail. His reports of Horatio Herbert Kitchnerer infuriated the influential British Field Marshal, and Wallace was banned as a war correspondent until World War I. In 1901 he married Ivy Caldecott; they divorced in 1918. Before returning to London, Wallace served in 1902 as editor of the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg. During the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) Wallace was sent by the Daily Mail to Vigo to investigate a conflict in which the Russians opened fire on a British fishing fleet believing it to be the Japanese navy. During his travels, she learned about the activities of Russian and English spies operating along the coasts of Spain and Portugal. Wallace later returned to the world of secret agents in his stories of him, although he focused mainly on crime and crime books. His most famous spy story, 'Code No. 2', first appeared in the Stand Magazine in April 1916, then in various collections and anthologies. The daughters of the Night was first published in 1925. The main character is Jim Bartholomew and the description that follows highlights his personality and attitudes. Jim Bartholomew, booted and spurred and eager to leave, sat down on the edge of the table and looked at his watch with a sigh. He seemed too young a man to be the manager of South Devon Farmers' Bank's major branch, and perhaps the fact that his father had been CEO of that company before he died had something to do with his appointment. But those who saw in him only a well-dressed young man with a taste for good horses, and imagined that his successes began and ended with riding a horse or leading a hunting club cotillion, had reason to overturn their judgment. when they sat on the other side of his table and talked about business. He looked at his watch and groaned. There was really no reason for him to stay until closing time, because the previous day had been Moorford Market and the cash account had left that morning on the train to Exeter. Exeter.