Green Rust
by Edgar Wallace
Yikes! There are 172 films associated with Edgar Wallace on IMDB. IMDB also says that "For a 20th century author he has had the greatest number of novels made into movies." Take that, Stephen King.
"Green Rust" was one of the very first of these adaptations. Written in 1919, it was filmed in England as "The Green Terror" the same year. (I wish that I knew if the film was still around.)
This is the first Wallace novel that I have read. My impression is that the work is very much like that of some of the other popular fiction writers that I've run across from that era. (Two that come to mind are Arthur B. Reeve and Arthur Stringer.) Throw in an invention or two. Put in a resourceful detective-type or inventor-type hero. Don't forget the heroine! Possibly add a little WW I influence and voila...out comes what hopefully is an entertaining story.
SPOILERS
In "Green Rust", the invention is a powder which is capable of destroying the wheat crop of entire nations by strategically placing it. The heroine is Olivia Cresswell. She's the unwitting heiress to a fortune; the claiming of which can only be done by her and her husband upon marriage. Enter Doctor van Heerden. His plan is to dope Olivia up with something called "bromocine" and make her his wife. This is in order to fund his insidious plan to blackmail Germany's war enemies (production of "green rust" costs money, naturally).
Beale, our hero, thwarts the Doc's plan every step of the way. At first, he does this by spying while pretending to be the neighborhood drunk. Later, he accomplishes this by marrying Olivia himself. (you gotta understand what's goin' on here: Olivia is being held and her will is slowly be sapped by the drug, van Heerden will marry her in hours, Beale sneaks in with what he thinks is a bogus parson, Beale and Oliva are hitched for real though cuz the parson is for real!)
The twists and turns are all convoluted but fun.
Of course, in the end good triumphs over evil.
(Cupid also scores a victory. The marriage stands!!)
written: 12/20/2002