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Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
A letter marked with a red circle gives its victim a choice: pay or die.
In Edgar Wallace’s The Crimson Circle, a secret criminal body holds London victims in fear. Its letters demand money, and its leader remains unknown. Inspector Parr leads Scotland Yard’s effort to stop it, but frightened victims offer no help. Derrick Yale, a student of criminals, searches the Circle’s methods for a human weakness.
Secrets make the hunt harder. Thalia Drummond has a hidden side to her life, and her choices leave her loyalties uncertain. Felix Marl knows about a concealed criminal past and uses that knowledge for blackmail. With people hiding who they are and what they know, the puzzle turns on what each person chooses to conceal.
What you’ll discover
- A threat in red Follow the Circle’s letters, where a simple mark carries a deadly demand.
- An enemy without a name Join Inspector Parr’s search for a criminal leader whose identity remains hidden.
- The mind behind crime Watch Derrick Yale study criminal methods for the weakness that might expose them.
- Loyalties under suspicion Meet Thalia Drummond, whose concealed life makes her choices difficult to read.
- A pace that pulls Short chapters, changing scenes, and plot-driving dialogue keep the blackmail puzzle moving.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy sealed-room puzzles, hooded villains, brisk London chases, quick-witted heroines, and a duel between a stolid policeman and a brilliant mind-reader.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A failed execution opens the mystery
- The warning is already close
- A confession leaves the danger alive
- Thalia enters the hidden organisation
- The trap becomes another puzzle
- Following the money exposes danger
- Appearances conceal what people intend
- Money binds victims to their enemies
- Small clues test the hidden network
Who’s who
- Thalia DrummondA quick-witted secretary who steals, jokes, and takes risks, and who joins the Crimson Circle for reasons she keeps to herself.
- Inspector ParrA short, red-faced police inspector who looks dull, asks slow questions, and needs to catch the gang before he loses his post.
- Derrick YaleA graceful private detective who reads the past from objects he touches and helps the police hunt the Circle.
- Jack BeardmoreA young heir who loves Thalia, refuses to believe she is a thief, and wants justice for his murdered father.
- Harvey FroyantA rich, bald, miserly landowner and Thalia's employer who fears the Circle but hates losing his money even more.
- Felix MarlA breathless land speculator with a criminal past in France who blackmails a banker and fears a ghost from Toulouse.
- John BrabazonA dignified banker who hides his debts and crimes, and who wants to escape before he is found out.
- Flush BarnetA brilliantined burglar who dreams of a big score and hopes to use Thalia to get into a rich man's house.
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The Crimson Circle in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
The Crimson Circle
by Edgar Wallace · 1922
A hooded driver in a dark London square offers desperate men money, and the price is silence.
Medium level2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“Never trust a man or woman until you know the worst about them”
In short
What if a murder machine failed because a drunk man hammered one nail into the wrong place? A guillotine in Toulouse refuses to drop its blade, a condemned man walks away alive, and eleven years later that same nail is still killing people.
The Crimson Circle at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 10 min3 h 20 min fast, 5 h slow
- Length
- 59,600 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1922by Edgar Wallace
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A Faulty Guillotine and a Hooded Recruiter
The book opens with a joke of fate. In Toulouse, a tipsy man named Pallion drives a nail into a guillotine frame to fix a crooked blade. At dawn the English criminal Lightman is strapped to the plank, and the blade drops only as far as the nail. It fails three times, and the prisoner is led back to his cell alive.
Then the story jumps to London on a stormy night. A nervous man climbs into a closed car and finds a driver in a black silk hood. The driver knows the man is near bankruptcy and plans to end his life on Sunday.
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Details
- First published
- 1922
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 4 h 50 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Wallace, Edgar. The Crimson Circle. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-crimson-circle.
Wallace, E. (2026). The Crimson Circle. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-crimson-circle (Original work published 1922)
Wallace, Edgar. The Crimson Circle. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-crimson-circle.
@book{wallace2026crimson,
author = {Wallace, Edgar},
title = {The Crimson Circle},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-crimson-circle},
note = {First published 1922}
}
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What is The Crimson Circle about?
It is a crime thriller about a masked blackmailer who threatens rich men and eventually the British government. Inspector Parr and his undercover daughter Thalia Drummond work to expose the blackmailer, who poses as the detective Derrick Yale.
What does the Crimson Circle mean in the book?
It is the name and trademark of the blackmailer and his gang. A crimson circle appears on warning cards, trees, doors, and paper. The prologue about a failed guillotine in Toulouse hints at why the name matters.
Is The Crimson Circle a true story?
No. Wallace states that all characters are imaginary. It is a crime novel from the early 1920s, set in London and the country, with invented crimes, though it reflects real fears about blackmail and organised crime.
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.
“Never trust a man or woman until you know the worst about them”
More by Edgar Wallace
See all their booksMore like this
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