Wallace, Edgar - The Valley of Ghosts (1925)

Doctor Andy Macleod is a forensic investigator for the police. His capture of the jewel thief Four-Eyed Scottie brings him to Beverley Green, an idyllic garden suburb for the wealthy, where he himself is captivated by the beautiful Stella Nelson. But Beverley Green, like Stella Nelson, is not all it seems. Soon Macleod is down there again, hunting a double murderer. The clues point to the loan shark Abraham Selim; but Selim proves remarkably elusive. Eventually Macleod -- aided by Scottie, who has contrived an alibi and dodged the charges -- unscrambles the mystery of the Valley of Ghosts.

Fairly standard Wallace, with no great intricacies of plot or fancy murder methods, and a little more light-hearted than his mysteries set in London tend to be. Despite his connection with the police Andy Macleod plays a lone hand, and the humour is provided mainly by the bumptious Scottie. Various minor mysteries are cleared up along the way, but the main solution will present no problem to a detective story fan.

Wallace never really pursued the idea of a series detective. JG Reeder stars in about four books (and appears once, in name only, in this one), and the Sooper in the same, but the only genuine series Wallace wrote was the non-detective Sanders of the River short stories, which eventually filled about seven books. Would his reputation among detective fans be higher, I wonder, if he had conscientiously turned out a couple of dozen investigations featuring the same character?

But then, of course, he wouldn't have been able to marry him off to the heroine at the end of each book.

The Valley of Ghosts is available from Gutenberg Australia.

Jon.