10 h 19 minAudiobook13 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 10 h 19 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What would you believe when hidden treasure, ancient secrets and deadly deception disturb the quiet English countryside?
In The Black Abbot, Edgar Wallace brings hidden wealth and a sense of menace into a rural mystery. The promise of treasure gives danger a powerful lure. Yet the puzzle asks you to look beyond what people want and question what they let others see.
Deception sits at the heart of this brisk, old-fashioned mystery. Secrets make appearances hard to trust, and fear can turn attention away from practical motives. Wallace keeps the focus on suspense: who is lying, who only seems to be, and what might lie beneath a frightening surface.
What you’ll discover
- Quiet country, dark secrets Enter an English countryside where rural quiet provides the backdrop for secrets and menace.
- The lure of treasure Explore how the promise of hidden wealth gives people reasons to conceal their motives.
- Appearances worth questioning Weigh what people reveal against what they may prefer to keep out of sight.
- A brisk unfolding puzzle Follow a mystery that puts pace and suspense ahead of slow, searching character studies.
- Fear and deception Look beneath the menace and consider how frightening appearances can serve a practical purpose.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy ghost stories, hidden treasure and old English country houses will find plenty here, along with fans of clever detectives, quick chapters and a quiet love story.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A haunted house and a frightened earl
- A second son falls for his brother's fiancée
- Arthur Gwyn lives on money that is gone
- Gilder is the bookmaker who ruined Arthur
- A ghost at the Abbey and a knife in the dark
- Scotland Yard sends a man who looks like a monkey
- Gilder searches the vault beneath the Abbey
- Ruin, a forced bargain and a body in a cowl
- What the story is about and how it is told
Who’s who
- Dick AlfordThe earl's half-brother and manager of the Chelford estates, a practical, tough second son who laughs at ghosts and loves Leslie in silence.
- Leslie GwynA spirited young woman engaged to Harry Chelford by her brother's design, who is starting to question both her money and her heart.
- Harry ChelfordThe eighteenth Earl, a nervous scholar of old books who fears death and hopes to find the treasure and the flask of Life Water.
- Arthur GwynLeslie's vain brother, a London lawyer in debt, who needs the Chelford fortune to cover what he has gambled away.
- Fabrian GilderArthur's head clerk, a cold, powerful man with a hidden fortune, who wants to marry Leslie and have a share of the gold.
- Mary WennerHarry's former secretary, a genteel schemer who has found the way into the Abbey vaults and wants a husband and a fortune.
- Sergeant PuttlerA Scotland Yard detective with a simian face, a churchwarden and teetotaler, who takes his holiday at Fossaway Manor to guard the family.
- ThomasThe footman with a prison record who spies for Gilder and hopes to profit from whatever secrets he hears at the manor.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
- On your phone, tablet, computer or Kindle, with the type as large as you like.
- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 10 h 19 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 13 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Der Schwarze Abt in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Der Schwarze Abt
by Edgar Wallace · 1926
A monk's ghost haunts Fossaway Manor while Dick Alford and Gilder chase a hidden Elizabethan fortune.
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In short
The Black Abbot is a mystery novel by Edgar Wallace, who died in 1932 after writing a very large number of thrillers. It is set in the Sussex countryside at Fossaway Manor, where a ghost in a monk's habit has begun to walk again and where, according to legend, a fortune in Spanish gold lies hidden.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A haunted house and a frightened earl
Fossaway Manor stands in Sussex above the village of Chelfordbury, and the book opens in its shadowy library. Harry Alford, the eighteenth Earl of Chelford, works there under green-shaded lamps among black-letter books from Germany. He is thin, pale and not yet thirty. Over the fireplace hangs a portrait of his dead mother, whose dark eyes he shares.
Harry has just forbidden his servants to mention the Black Abbot. By the old story, the Abbot of Chelfordbury was murdered seven hundred years ago on the second earl's orders, and his ghost has walked ever since. Lately the figure is seen again, and a London paper prints the news. Harry tells reporters it is a village prank, yet he believes in the ghost as firmly as he denies it.
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What is The Black Abbot about?
It follows the Chelford family at Fossaway Manor in Sussex, where a ghost in a monk's habit appears while several people hunt a hidden Elizabethan fortune. Dick Alford and a Scotland Yard detective try to protect the household from a growing series of crimes.
Who is the Black Abbot in the book?
The Black Abbot is a figure in a black monk's habit said to be the ghost of an abbot murdered seven hundred years ago. Dick Alford and others believe it is a human wearing a disguise, and finding who wears it drives the mystery.
What is the Chelford treasure?
It is a thousand gold ingots of thirty-five pounds each, brought from Spanish ships in Elizabethan times and hidden on the estate. Harry also seeks a crystal flask of Life Water. Four hundred years of searches have found neither.
The author
Edgar Wallace
1875–1932 · British crime writer
Edgar Wallace was a hugely prolific British writer of thrillers and crime fiction who later co-created the story for King Kong. The Adventures of Heine follows Heine, a German secret agent, through a series of comic misadventures in Britain during the First World War.
More by Edgar Wallace
All 21 booksMore like this
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