Apparently, this guy wrote a boat-load of "Lone Wolf" books. It appears further that the "Lone Wolf" books morphed into a series of about two dozen movies (half a dozen silent ones). I'm not sure I ever heard of them before. Given that this first book came out when my dad was 8, and given that I have an impression that he rather liked swash-buckling adventure when he was young, I'm a bit surprised at my ignorance. After all, I knew all about The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Prisoner of Zenda, and Treasure Island (all of which are far superior to The Lone Wolf). Whatever, I found this book at a church book sale and figured it might be a fun change from real literature. It's essentially pulp mystery fiction from the early 20th century.

As pulp fiction goes, I suppose it's ok, although I wasn't much taken by it. There's little character development and lots of improbable action, action that makes no sense. The main character is a master burgler who also poses as a collector of fine art. His guiding principle is to avoid entanglements with all people, especially women. So, he sees a young woman, dining with some older men, falls instantly in love and reforms, after which, people keep trying to kill him in devious ways. Or something like that.

The whole thing seemed stupid to me. But it has all the elements of exciting adventure, people being shadowed, car chases, bullets flying, bodies with slit throats, beautiful women inexplicably showing up at strange venues in the middle of the night, and even an airplane chase (only a mere 11 years after the Wright Brothers).

Conceivably I'll read another in the series. They are, after all, all out of copyright. But I've read a lot of cheesy fiction that is much better written and more compelling. I think I'll search out more of that when I need a break.

I was having trouble deciding what to read next and chose this book, out of all the ones in my e-book collection, using a random number generator. I couldn't even remember why I'd added it to my collection, but, now that I've finished it, I'm pretty sure it was one I downloaded after thoroughly enjoying Maurice Leblanc's The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar. Lanyard and Lupin had several similarities, and one character in Vance's book even said they were much alike. Unfortunately, Lanyard wasn't as enjoyable a character as Lupin.

Early on, I realized that this was not going to be an easy read for me. I had to reread certain sentences and paragraphs several times to try to figure out what they meant. My trouble with understanding portions of this book was, at least in part, due to my limited vocabulary. For example, I was very confused by Vance's frequent references to Apaches in Paris. When I finally looked the word up in the dictionary, I learned that “Apache” can mean “Parisian gangster.” Ah ha! However, it also seemed to me that some sentences were more confusingly/awkwardly constructed than they needed to be. Or perhaps I'm just too much of a modern reader.

Lanyard started off as a wonderful character, with lots of potential for depth and complexity. He was abandoned at Troyon's, a place where he was not loved and where he learned to only rely on himself. He was intelligent, had guts, and felt no shame in the thieving he did. He knew next to nothing about his past and was free to make himself into whoever he wanted to be. I thought perhaps that the story would focus on Lanyard's origins. After all, one of the member of the Pack was American, and Lanyard thought that he himself might have come from America before being left at Troyon's. Also, one of the members of the Pack bore a striking resemblance to Lanyard. I imagined a story in which Lanyard learned he was related to at least one of the members of the Pack and was faced with the decision to either join a family he'd secretly longed for but knew nothing about or cut all ties with them and continue being the Lone Wolf.

I don't know if any of the other books in Vance's Lone Wolf series explore Lanyard origins prior to ending up at Troyon's, but this one certainly didn't. The focus was entirely on Lanyard's attempts to evade the Pack, his budding feelings for Lucy, and his inner turmoil about who and what he was in comparison to the members of the Pack. This could have been even more fun than the book I was expecting, except Lanyard wasn't nearly as awesome as I think Vance wanted him to be.

Lanyard looked down on the Pack's members for being lesser criminals than himself, and yet he spent most of the book on the run from them. After years of supposedly succumbing neither to friendship nor love, he fell in love with Lucy for seemingly no reason beyond the fact that she was stereotypically feminine and the story called for it. This love caused him to do stupid things that would otherwise have been out of character, which set up a blindingly obvious plot twist.

All in all, this book was not nearly as good as I had hoped it would be, and I found myself skimming it near the end. The initial setup had promise, despite my difficulties with the writing, but Lanyard turned out to be a disappointment.

 

(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)