Wallace, Edgar - Blue Hand (1925)

Digby Groat is a nasty piece of work -- gang leader, bully, concoctor of drugs and amateur vivisectionist -- and when he falls in love with beautiful Eunice Weldon her friend Jim Steele has a thing or two to say about it. Digby and his equally nasty mother have managed to divert an inheritance their way, but the real heir has begun to express displeasure by leaving a rubber-stamped blue hand on Digby's windows and doors. The plot is revealed fairly early in the book, and the last part taken up by a prolonged chase involving cars, vans, yachts and seaplanes. Jim and Eunice are standard models of rectitude, and it is the cunning solicitor Septimus Salter and the Portuguese yacht captain who are the most interesting characters. A fairly routine book, though Wallace fans will want to add it to their collection.

Blue Hand is available from Gutenberg Australia.

Jon.

Digby Groat out Sir-Jaspers Sir Jasper. A thoroughly nasty man, he is a coward but not above menacing his kleptomaniac mother and torturing small animals. His mother, Jane Groat, will inherit a fortune from her brother on a certain date if her niece Dorothy Danton cannot be found. Since Dorothy died in childhood, it looks as if the Groats will soon be extremely wealthy, but Jim Steele, secretary to London solicitor Septimus Salter, is determined to thwart them. To his horror, Eunice Weldon, the girl he loves, accepts the post of secretary to Jane Groat and goes to live in the family home. The first night under their roof Eunice receives an unseen nocturnal visitor who leaves a card advising her to flee the house, stamped with a blue hand. Despite this ominous warning, after Jane Groat suffers a stroke Eunice stays on and soon the reader is in the thick of a plot featuring drugs, gangs, derring-do on trains, in planes, and on the high seas, and a lot more besides. Aside: if this had been a film, no doubt the audience would cheer when they see how a minor baddie comes to a particularly spectacular end.

My verdict: There's somewhat less mystery as such in Blue Hand than in other Wallaces and parts of the plot are transparent, but still a few twists will catch the reader by surprise. The pace picks up towards the end of the book and it was refreshing to see a novel whose heroinne has backbone.

Etext

Mary R