The Mission Brief
Let me cut to the chase - I wanted to like this one more than I did. Edgar Wallace is a legend in the mystery game, and "Secret House" has all the ingredients I usually love: blackmail, murder, shadowy figures, a millionaire with secrets, and the head of the secret police living conveniently down the street. Classic early 20th century British thriller stuff. I was driving back from a client meeting in Houston - three hours of I-10 that feels like six - and figured this would be perfect windshield time.
It wasn't. Not entirely, anyway.
The Story Itself
Okay, so here's where Wallace does what Wallace does best. The setup is genuinely intriguing - a veiled "editor" at some sketchy London publication, a foreigner showing up with unclear motives, and suddenly two dead bodies outside a millionaire's door. The plot twists are there. The intrigue is there. Wallace was churning out over 175 novels in his career, and you can tell he knew how to construct a mystery that keeps you guessing.
The problem? The narrative gets a bit... disjointed. I've read enough mission reports to know when someone's trying to connect dots that don't quite line up. There are moments where I found myself rewinding because I wasn't sure if I'd missed something or if the story just jumped tracks. Classic Wallace, honestly - the man wrote fast and it shows. But when you're locked in a truck cab with nothing but the road and the audiobook, those confusing moments hit different than they would on paper where you can flip back a few pages.
The blackmail angle is solid though. I've seen corporate espionage cases that play out exactly like this - everyone's hiding something, nobody is who they claim to be, and the money trail leads somewhere ugly. Wallace clearly understood human nature and greed. That part rings true even a century later.
The Narration Problem
Here's where it lost me. Don W. Jenkins has clear diction - I'll give him that. The pacing is fine. But man, the delivery is flat. Like, "reading a grocery list" flat. One reviewer called it "like he was in an empty room" and that's... actually perfect. There's no warmth. No drama. No variation.
Look, I've sat through countless military briefings delivered in monotone by officers who clearly didn't want to be there. I can handle boring delivery when the content matters. But fiction? Mystery? You need something to pull you in. Jenkins doesn't give you that. The veiled editor should feel menacing. The millionaire should feel suspicious. The secret police chief should feel competent and sharp. Instead, everyone sounds like they're reading the weather forecast.
(And before anyone says I'm being harsh - I listened at 1.25x like I always do, and even that didn't help. Sometimes speeding up a dull narrator adds energy. Not here.)
I couldn't find much about Jenkins online beyond his LibriVox work, but based on this performance, dramatic voice acting isn't his strong suit. He's a volunteer narrator doing free audiobooks, so I'm not going to pile on too hard. But fair warning - if you need engaging narration to stay locked in, this will test your patience.
Who Should Deploy
Worth your time? Here's the debrief:
If you're a Wallace completist or you love classic British mysteries from that era, the story itself delivers enough twists to justify the six hours. The plot is genuinely clever in places, and there's something satisfying about how these old-school mysteries unfold - no forensic technology, no DNA evidence, just observation and deduction.
But if monotonous narration drives you crazy? If you need voice acting that brings characters to life? Read it instead. Seriously. Grab the free ebook from Project Gutenberg and save yourself the frustration. The story deserves better than what it gets here.
I finished it - Ranger and I made it through on a combination of that Houston drive and some early morning runs - but I can't say I'd recommend this specific audiobook version to anyone who isn't already committed to listening rather than reading. The narrator didn't ruin it, but he definitely didn't help.
Mission... accomplished? Barely. With significant casualties to my attention span.
Final Verdict
Edgar Wallace wrote a solid mystery. Don W. Jenkins delivered it like a terms-of-service agreement. If you can push through the flat narration, there's a decent classic thriller underneath. If you can't - and honestly, no judgment - just read the book. It's public domain anyway.
Ranger slept through most of this one. That tells you something.
