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Better known as a mystery writer, Wallace, who churned out quite a lot of literature (174 novels, 24 plays!), also did a series about an eccentric London businessman named Augustus Tibbetts, nicknamed Bones, and this is one of those books. Essentially, Bones in London is a series of loosely connected short stories, all with the same basic plot, chapter after chapter.

The hero launches into some entrepreneurial venture, usually something that looks like a very bad deal or a swindle, and then manages to survive and usually come out amassing a great profit. Most of the time this is due to luck, although occasionally he does demonstrate clever thinking. He is madly in love and incredibly shy around the beautiful (and smart) young secretary he hires, though she seems to remain blissfully unaware despite all the obvious clues. Still, as the novel progresses, we do see some development on that front.

The many diverse swindles help one get a sense of the capitalistic spirit in England when it still had an Empire, and the heavy use of slang is fun for those who enjoy that sort of linguistic examination.

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About the Author: Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1 April 1875 - 10 February 1932) was an English writer.

Born into poverty as an illegitimate London child, Wallace left school at age 12. He joined the army at age 21 and was a war correspondent during the Second Boer War, for Reuters and the Daily Mail. Struggling with debt, he left South Africa, returned to London, and began writing thrillers to raise income, publishing books including The Four Just Men (1905). Drawing on his time as a reporter in the Congo, covering the Belgian atrocities, Wallace serialised short stories in magazines such as The Windsor Magazine and later published collections such as Sanders of the River (1911). He signed with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921 and became an internationally recognised author.

After an unsuccessful bid to stand as Liberal MP for Blackpool (as one of David Lloyd George's Independent Liberals) in the 1931 general election, Wallace moved to Hollywood, where he worked as a script writer for RKO studios. He died suddenly from undiagnosed diabetes, during the initial drafting of King Kong (1933).

Wallace was such a prolific writer that one of his publishers claimed that a quarter of all books in England were written by him. As well as journalism, Wallace wrote screen plays, poetry, historical non-fiction, 18 stage plays, 957 short stories, and over 170 novels, 12 in 1929 alone. More than 160 films have been made of Wallace's work. He is remembered for the creation of King Kong, as a writer of 'the colonial imagination', for the J. G. Reeder detective stories, and for The Green Archer serial. He sold over 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions, and The Economist describes him as "one of the most prolific thriller writers of [the 20th] century", although few of his books are still in print in the UK.