More Educated Evans E-Book

Edgar Wallace

• Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

In "More Educated Evans," Edgar Wallace masterfully combines elements of crime fiction, humor, and social commentary, continuing the adventures of his charismatic amateur detective, 'Educated Evans.' This novel is imbued with Wallace's characteristic wit and sharp dialogue, set against the backdrop of early 20th-century London, where class distinctions and societal norms are both challenged and embraced. The narrative is structured around a gripping mystery that unfolds through clever twists and engaging character interactions, reflecting the era's fascination with both the absurdities of life and the intricacies of criminality. Edgar Wallace, a prolific British author, was famously known for his intricately plotted thrillers and an ability to weave a compelling narrative. His life experiences'—from his humble beginnings to serving as a war correspondent and a screenwriter'—greatly influenced his storytelling. Wallace's exploration of the human psyche and social dynamics in "More Educated Evans" highlights his keen observational skills and profound understanding of the complexities of everyday life, making him a celebrated figure in early 20th-century literature. This book is highly recommended for readers who appreciate a blend of mystery and humor, as it not only entertains but also prompts reflection on societal issues. Wallace's engaging prose and intricate plotting make "More Educated Evans" an essential read for both mystery enthusiasts and those interested in the evolution of crime fiction. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.

Leseprobe

Edgar Wallace

More Educated Evans

Enriched edition. A Charming Amateur Sleuth Unravels 1920s British Mysteries

In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience.

Introduction, Studies and Commentaries by Meredith Langley

Edited and published by Good Press, 2022

[email protected]

EAN 4066338093516

Table of Contents

Introduction

Historical Context

Synopsis (Selection)

More Educated Evans

Analysis

Reflection

Memorable Quotes

Introduction

Table of Contents

More Educated Evans presents a focused selection of Edgar Wallace’s comic fiction centered on his celebrated racing tipster, known for bluster, bravado, and an unquenchable faith in the turf. Rather than a compendium of every form he attempted, this collection concentrates on a coherent sequence of stories that return to the same milieu and figure, allowing character, setting, and situation to deepen across episodes. Its purpose is to gather representative adventures that showcase Wallace’s lighter touch, his eye for popular entertainment, and his instinct for momentum, offering both newcomers and seasoned readers a concentrated view of a signature creation within his wider body of work.

The volume consists of short fiction—self-contained tales that read swiftly and stand on their own, yet accumulate resonance when taken together. These are narrative episodes, not essays, poems, or dramatic scripts, and they inhabit the overlapping territories of comic fiction, sporting story, and light crime caper. The racetrack supplies the backdrop and vocabulary, while the city’s streets and parlors furnish scene and social texture. Each piece turns on a situation or scheme, advancing through incident and dialogue toward a neat resolution. The result is a compact, varied set of stories unified by character, setting, and a consistent tonal range from farce to gentle satire.

Across the collection, Wallace returns to themes that animate the world of the turf and the city: luck against judgment, bravado against prudence, and reputation against reality. The stories explore how wit, nerve, and improvisation can carry a person through perilously thin margins, while exposing the foibles of bettors, bookmakers, and bystanders alike. Friendship, loyalty, and the small codes of honor that govern unofficial transactions often complicate the pursuit of profit. Chance is a constant antagonist and accomplice. Through these recurring tensions, the tales examine aspiration and delusion with a genial candor, inviting readers to relish both the audacity of schemes and the human warmth beneath them.

Stylistically, the collection exemplifies Wallace’s hallmark concision and pace. Scenes open quickly, with lively exchanges that advance plot and sketch character in a few strokes. Dialogue carries much of the humor and verve, drawing energy from the rhythms and idioms of everyday speech associated with the racing crowd. Descriptions are economical but pointed, allowing set pieces and reversals to land cleanly. The prose favors movement over ornament, and surprise over introspection, with reveals that hinge on practical ingenuity rather than elaborate contrivance. This briskness, paired with a steady comic pressure, gives the stories the propulsion of thrillers while maintaining a distinctly playful, humane register.

Taken together, these works retain their significance as an enduring portrait of popular culture built around the racetrack—its rituals, small dramas, and unwritten rules. They capture a slice of urban life where class boundaries blur under the common calculus of a wager, and where authority, luck, and streetwise cunning negotiate a constantly shifting balance. As a complement to Wallace’s renowned thrillers, the collection reveals his versatility: he can evoke suspense without menace, and irony without bitterness. The tales persist because they are entertaining first, but they also preserve the texture of a distinctive social world and the comic resilience of those who move within it.

Although each episode is discrete, the sequence yields a cumulative portrait of character and milieu. Familiar haunts recur—training yards, betting rings, back rooms—populated by a rotating gallery of bookmakers, owners, trainers, patrons, and policemen. Patterns emerge: a boast triggers a challenge, a plan meets friction, a result surprises both skeptics and believers. The repetition is purposeful, offering variations on a theme while allowing small shifts in tone—from buoyant farce to wry observation—to reshape expectations. This balance of predictability and invention frames Educated Evans less as a static caricature than as a dependable compass for navigating the hazards, pleasures, and vanities of the turf.

As an introduction to Edgar Wallace’s comic imagination, More Educated Evans is both an accessible entry point and a satisfying return for readers who know his broader oeuvre. It invites reading straight through or in intervals, the better to enjoy the cadence of setup and payoff that each story delivers. Without requiring specialist knowledge, it engages the curiosity and risk inherent in games of chance, while affirming the value of nerve, resource, and conviviality. Concentrated yet varied, the collection stands on its own terms and illuminates a facet of Wallace that has long delighted audiences: his instinct for crowd-pleasing narrative shaped by keen observation and craft.

Historical Context

Table of Contents

Edgar Wallace, born Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace on 1 April 1875 in Greenwich, London, wrote the Educated Evans tales out of a lifetime’s familiarity with urban working-class speech and humor. Brought up in Deptford, he left school early, enlisted in the Royal West Kent Regiment in 1894, and learned speed, compression, and anecdotal sharpness as a Boer War correspondent (1899–1902) for Reuters and the Daily Mail under Alfred Harmsworth. Those habits animate his racing vignettes as much as his crime fiction. Wallace died in Beverly Hills on 10 February 1932, having bridged Fleet Street, the imperial frontier, and, at the last, Hollywood studios.

The social world behind More Educated Evans is interwar Britain, where wartime disruption gave way to mass leisure and quickening urban life. Horse racing, curtailed and relocated during 1915–1918, resumed its grand rituals in 1919 at Epsom, Ascot, and Newmarket, restoring rhythms that anchored popular calendars. Crowds traveled by Southern Railway to Epsom Downs and by LNER to Newmarket Heath, mingling clerks, artisans, and aristocrats. Against a backdrop of demobilization, unemployment spikes in 1921, and the General Strike of May 1926, the turf offered spectacle, ready money wagers, and comic relief—precisely the milieu in which Wallace’s cockney tipster thrives and misfires.

Betting law shaped the texture of these stories. The Betting Act of 1853 and the Street Betting Act of 1906 criminalized off-course cash wagering, pushing gambling onto pavements, in back rooms, and into coded talk. On-course bookmakers’ rings at Epsom, Ascot, Cheltenham, and Doncaster remained legal, feeding the “starting price” network that pulsed through London. The Racecourse Betting Act of 1928 created the Racecourse Betting Control Board and paved the way for the Tote, which opened on British courses in 1929. Wallace’s plots inhabit this liminal economy—half-regulated, half-clandestine—where touts, trainers, and tipsters barter rumor, reputation, and luck.

Wallace’s career in journalism explains the collection’s brisk, reportorial cadence. Fleet Street papers expanded racing coverage in the 1910s and 1920s, with tipping columns and stop-press results from The Sporting Life to the Daily Mail. Telegraph and telephone lines flashed “SP” returns from the rails to city alleys within minutes; the Press Association standardized race reports; and, from 1922, the BBC relayed results to a national audience. Wallace moved easily in this media ecosystem, later launching The Thriller magazine in 1929. The brisk exchange of names, odds, and sudden reversals in the stories mirrors the news desk’s appetite for pace and punch.

The tales draw on a lived topography of London and the turf. East End pubs, coffee stalls, and street corners—Deptford, Bethnal Green, Shoreditch—were hubs where bookmakers’ runners met clients and tipsters spun yarns. Police courts at Bow Street and Marlborough Street processed steady dockets of street betting cases, underscoring the legal ambiguity that animates comic misadventures. Outside the metropolis, Tattersalls in Knightsbridge (before its move to Newmarket in 1939) symbolized the trade in bloodstock, while the Jockey Club at Newmarket embodied patrician authority. Trains, trams, and the growing motorcar culture made quick dashes to meetings feasible for schemers and dreamers alike.

Educated Evans’s ironic honorific points to interwar debates about class, aspiration, and “self-improvement.” The malapropisms and cockney patter echo music-hall traditions while satirizing the ways working Londoners appropriated gentlemanly codes—of breeding, form, and “inside information.” Wallace had already portrayed establishment control in imperial fiction like Sanders of the River (1911) and bureaucratic cunning in the Mr J. G. Reeder stories of the mid-1920s; here he pivots that diagnostic eye on racing’s informal economy. The collection’s comedy therefore doubles as social observation, sketching how knowledge, bluff, and chance mediated mobility in a city simultaneously deferential to and subversive of hierarchy.

Publication history underlines Wallace’s mass-market reach. More Educated Evans appeared in London in 1926 with Hodder & Stoughton, whose yellow-jacketed thrillers—often priced at seven shillings and sixpence—were staples of railway bookstalls and lending libraries such as Boots. Many Wallace pieces first circulated in newspapers or weeklies before hardback issue, a pathway that preserved their punchline timing and episodic structure. The cycle’s durable appeal is evident in later adaptations, including a British film version released in 1936 and a BBC television series in 1957. Such afterlives testify to how the stories distilled recognizably modern mischief from racing’s rituals and risks.

International and economic currents also pressed on Wallace’s world. The 1920s saw currency instability and, by 1930, depression anxieties, sharpening appetites for quick winnings even as credit tightened. New mass entertainments—greyhound racing from 1926 at venues like Belle Vue, Manchester—competed with the turf, while the 1913 Epsom Derby death of suffragette Emily Davison lingered as proof that racing intersected politics and protest. In 1931–1932 Wallace worked in Hollywood for RKO, drafting early treatments for King Kong before his death. The collection’s blend of bravado and bathos thus emerges from a Britain balancing risk and propriety, local patter and global modernity.

Synopsis (Selection)

Table of Contents

I. — THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

Evans reconnects with familiar racing circles when a notable figure returns to the local turf, prompting a fresh round of schemes to turn inside knowledge into profit. His plans quickly tangle with rival interests and official scrutiny.

II. — A SOUVENIR

A seemingly harmless memento from a race meeting draws unwanted attention and suspicion. Evans must talk fast and maneuver cleverly to keep clear of trouble while protecting a promising tip.

III. — THE MAKER OF WINNERS

Hoping to tap a golden source of inside information, Evans aligns himself with a man reputed to turn outsiders into winners. Confidence collides with reality as competing agendas and tight-lipped stables complicate the play.

IV. — A JUDGE OF RACING

Evans finds himself weighing in on a contentious racing decision, where bluster must pass for expertise. The stakes rise when his judgment threatens to affect reputations and purses.

V. — AN AMAZING SELECTION

Evans touts a startling long shot that captures the betting public’s imagination. As bookmakers and the authorities take notice, he must prove his pick isn’t pure fantasy.

VI. — A GOOD GALLOP

A dawn workout convinces Evans he has spotted a certainty. Misread signals and mixed messages turn the ‘good thing’ into a chase across tracks and training grounds.

VII. — A HORSE OF THE SAME COLOUR

Look-alike horses and crossed wires spark a comedy of mistaken identity. Evans scrambles to sort the runners before his wagers—and reputation—are undone.

VIII. — MIXING IT

Drawn into a simmering feud among racing men, Evans relies on bluff and bravado to hold his ground. The quarrel spills onto the course, threatening his latest betting coup.

IX. — THE FREAK DINNER

An eccentric dinner among turf characters becomes a stage for dares and wagers. Evans improvises to turn a social stunt into a betting opportunity.

X. — THE USER OF MEN

Evans encounters a smooth operator who exploits others for gain. He must decide whether to play along, outmaneuver the manipulator, or risk being used himself.

XII. — THE JOURNALIST

A newspaperman sets his sights on Evans after a string of attention-grabbing tips. Media interest tests Evans’s flair for embellishment and threatens to expose his methods.

More Educated Evans

Main Table of Contents

I. — THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

* * * * *

II. — A SOUVENIR

* * * * *

III. — THE MAKER OF WINNERS

IV. — A JUDGE OF RACING

V. — AN AMAZING SELECTION

* * * * *

VI. — A GOOD GALLOP

* * * * *

VII. — A HORSE OF THE SAME COLOUR

VIII. — MIXING IT

* * * * *

IX. — THE FREAK DINNER

X. — THE USER OF MEN

* * * * *

XII. — THE JOURNALIST

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

"

I. — THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

Table of Contents

IT is an axiom of life that the course of true love never ran smoothly. There were certainly snags in the current of Mr. Cris Holborn's affair, but the largest and most considerable of these was Florrie Beaches' mamma, who was stout and snacky. She snacked Mr. Holborn about his profession (she herself being a lady of property and owning the house in Mornington Crescent); she snacked him about his gentlemanliness; she snacked him on the question of stable odours (she invariably held a handkerchief to her bulbous nose when he came into her drawing-room) and she snacked him about his education.

Sometimes, in desperation, Mr. Holborn snacked back. He told her that he was one of the best known trainers of racehorses in England, but he was "Cris" to scores of the gentry and nobility, and that if a farmer's son was not good enough for the daughter of a retired publican, well, he'd like to know who was?

It may be said in passing that Mr. Beaches had not only retired from The Trade, but he had also retired from earth, and at the moment was resting at Kensal Rise under a huge slab of Aberdeen granite, on which was carved a tissue of falsehoods concerning his virtues as a father and husband and his great loss to the world.

And in a sense Cris Holborn's retort was justifiable. He was one of the best known trainers in England and one of the cleverest. In the language of the crude men who support the art and practice of horse-racing, he was "hot," and when his horses won, he won alone: sometimes not even the owner of the horse was aware of the forthcoming jubilations.

On a night in February, Mrs. Beaches snacked to such purpose, and was supported so effectively by her charming daughter, that things happened in Mornington Crescent. Neighbours heard the sound of shrill and angry voices, a door slammed violently, and there was the sound of breaking glass. . . .

* * * * *

Table of Contents

Peace reigned in Selbany Street Police Station[1q]. The station sergeant nodded over his book, the policeman on duty at the door yawned frequently and wondered if the clock over Disreili's, the High Class Jewellers, had stopped.

The hour was 1 a.m., and it was raining greasily as it can only rain in Somers Town. It had been a dull night, being Thursday, when men go soberly to their homes and play draughts with their children and win—if the children have any discretion. A night when the picture houses are half empty, and the bung at the Rose and Cabbage leant his bloated hands on the zinc counter and severely condemned socialism to an empty saloon.

There were only three men and one perfect lady in the cells at the back of the station: crime for the moment was unpopular.

Sergeant Arbuthnot Challoner, whom men called The Miller because he chewed straws, came in hastily out of the darkness, put his reeking umbrella in one corner of the hall and hung his shining mackintosh on a peg.

"Yes," he said sardonically, in reply to the grey-haired station sergeant, "it is a nice night!"

The clock ticked solemnly and noisily.

"Nothing doing?"

"Nothing," said The Miller shortly. He had been standing for two hours in the rain waiting for a motor-car thief who was expected to retrieve the car he had garaged.

At that moment, when the night seemed as barren of promise as the pages of Dr. Stott's sermons, a car drew up opposite the station entrance and there sailed into the charge room Miss Florrie Beaches and her ma. Miss Beaches was golden-haired and blue-eyed. She wore an evening dress of gold and crimson and a theatre wrap of blue and white. She had orchids at her waist and about her neck a choker of imitation pearls the size of pigeons' eggs. Her ma was more soberly arrayed in black with glittering jet ornaments.

"Is this the police court?" asked Miss Beaches with a certain ferocity.

"It is the police station," said The Miller. Florrie closed her eyes and nodded.

"That will do," she said quietly. "I wish to have a summons against Mr. Cris Holborn for insulting my dear mother and breach of promise, though I wouldn't marry the dirty dog not if he went down on his bare knees to me! He's a low type and if my poor dear father had been alive he'd have bashed his face in!"

"He would indeed," murmured Mrs. Beaches.

The Miller would have explained, but—

"When a lady lowers herself to be seen out with a common horse trainer," Miss

Beaches went on rapidly, "when she does everything for a man as I've done, introducing him into society so to speak, and when he didn't know what a fish knife was till me dear mother taught him, it's hard to hear your dear mother called an interfering hag."

"Old hag," murmured Mrs. Beaches. "Don't forget the winder glass, Flo."

"I'm coming to that, ma. Also I wish to charge him with breaking two panes of glass in our front door by his violent temper. I'm going to show this man up! Him and his lords that he knows!"

"Which we don't believe," prompted Mrs. Beaches.

"And the words he said about publicans is a disgrace," Florrie went on, "him and his horse that's going to win at Lincoln—"

"With twenty-one pound in hand," added the other under her breath.

"With twenty-one pounds in hand?" repeated The Miller thoughtfully.

"That's what he says," said Miss Florrie, "though I know nothing about horse-racing, my dear papa having brought me up very strict. Now I want to know if I can't have a summons—"

"Excuse me, miss," said The Miller gently, almost benevolently, what was the name of this horse?

"I can't think of it for the moment," said Miss Florrie, to whom the identity of the animal was much less important than the exposition of her grievances "but if I did know I should tell that common man that always used to be hanging about Camden Town—Elevated Evans."

"Educated Evans," corrected The Miller.

"He is not living here just now, but if I can do anything in the way of spreading the good news—"

"That's neither here nor there," said Miss Florrie tartly. "Can I have a summons "

And The Miller explained that summonses were never granted at a police station, and certainly never granted at one o'clock in the morning. He also expressed his doubt as to whether the offence of Mr. Holborn had been as heinous as she imagined. To the best of his ability he gave her the law on the subject. It is not unlawful to refer to a future mother-in-law in terms of opprobrium, and he also explained that the word "hag," whilst it might mean a vicious old lady, might also describe one who could bewitch.

"At the same time," he said sympathetically, "I feel that I would like to help you get your own back, Miss Beaches, and if you would mention the name of this horse I'd see—"

At this point the silent mother became voluble.

"It's no good your wasting your time here, my dear. They can't do anything, and if they could they wouldn't. All these men stick together. The best thing to do is to see your dear father's solicitors in the morning. If I don't have the law on Cris Holborn..."

They made a noisy exeunt.

It was rather strange, as they say in Somers Town when they mean to imply coincidence, that this reference to Educated Evans should have been followed up that very morning by the appearance in court of a local larcenist who in the old days invariably traced his downfall to the fact that he was a subscriber to Educated Evans' £5 specials; for Mr. Evans had been the World's Champion Prophet and Turf Adviser.

Miss Beaches had gone home with her mother, some of her ardour for vengeance a little cooled. She awoke at nine o'clock to find her mother with a letter in her hand. It had come by hand from her outrageous lover—she recognised his novel spelling.

"Ah, well, ma!" she said. "Perhaps I was hard on him: I knew he'd send me an humble apology first thing in the morning."

"It's got to be humble," said her ma ominously. " 'Ag I may be, but old I'm not!"

"You've got to allow something for youth," said Florrie romantically as she tore open the envelope. "The poor boy wasn't himself—"

She read the letter: it was very short.