Rex Hardinge

Starts promisingly with a man who has not only lost his memory but in fact struggles to remember the previous day trudging the streets of London, homeless and dazed.

The writing in the early chapters is very effective, one is drawn into this character`s world and a first-rate Blake seems imminent.

The story trundles along quite nicely, but somehow, it`s less satisfying than it ought to be.

At one point, Blake has to visit China to investigate certain matters further. This is an immense step away from the world the author has created hitherto, and detracts from the story as a whole. The reason for the visit seems contrived (Blake has already announced that he has a contact in China who will handle things there for him, but is then told pages later that his contact is temporarily unavailable). The China interlude is made more interesting by the author playing games with the reader`s expectations, but by the end, is more Bruce Willis than Sexton Blake.

Back to London, and more twists in the tale, but it is difficult to recapture the original mood of the piece. In the last few pages, the author does seem to lay on the `fiendishly cunning orientals` motif rather heavily, possibly influenced by some of the pre-war Blake writers. This works paricularly badly, given that the individual concerned does not seem to have been particularly cunning, let alone fiendishly so !

My suspicion is that the story did not reach the required length and was padded out. Lose the padding, and there`s a great story lurking in there !… (mais)