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The Melody of Death is a novel about a young man who starts behaving strangely upon hearing a certain melody. The smashing of the great jewel safe of Gilderheim, Pascoe and Company was plainly the work of skilled professionals. At nine-forty in the evening Gilderheim, after classifying the stones, had locked 60,000 worth of diamonds in the safe. But in spite of the precautions taken against cracksmen, when the office was opened the following morning it was found that the safe had been forced and that valuable contents were missing. Gilbert Standerton, nephew of irascible old General Standerton, might have cleared up the matter by telling what he knew of the affair to the police. For reasons of his own he preferred not to, and for even better reasons George Wallis, a criminal well-known to Scotland Yard, kept his knowledge of the affair secret. And then begins a long series of extraordinary crimes, so baffling that they defy detection until, in a startling manner, the dual mystery is unexpectedly solved.
About the author
British author Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace lived from 1 April 1875 to 10 February 1932. Wallace, a 12-year-old illegitimate kid from London who was born into poverty, quit school. He joined the military at the age of 21. He covered the Second Boer War for Reuters and the Daily Mail. At the age of 46, he passed very abruptly from untreated diabetes while the first draft of King Kong (1933) was being written. It's been said that Wallace wrote one-fourth of all literature in England. His works have been adapted into more than 160 movies. He is famous for writing "the colonial imagination," the J. G. Reeder detective novels, and The Green Archer serial in addition to his work on King Kong. The Economist referred to him as "one of the most prolific thriller writers of [the 20th] century" in 1997 despite the fact that the vast majority of his books are no longer in print in the UK but are still popular in Germany. He sold more than 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions. The Edgar Wallace Story, a 50-minute German television documentary, was produced in 1963 and starred his son Bryan Edgar Wallace.
