The Square Emerald

One of Edgar Wallace’s rare novels built around a woman detective, this 1926 thriller puts Leslie Maughan of Scotland Yard at the center of a case her male colleagues are quick to dismiss. A violent death, a man newly released from prison and convinced he was wronged, and the coldly imperious Princess Anita Bellini all draw Maughan deeper into a web of blackmail and old grudges among the wealthy. Wallace keeps the pace fast and the twists frequent, trusting his heroine’s nerve and shrewd read of people over tidy armchair deduction. It is brisk popular entertainment from the years when Wallace was the most widely read storyteller in Britain. This free PDF and EPUB edition brings the full novel back into easy reach.