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Title: Weaker Wallace
Review: Mystery writer is manipulated by Evil Foreigner into murder: he's sentenced to prison but his best friend, a brilliant police investigator, is on the case. Not bad setup and the villain is a lot of fun -- he does just about everything except curl his mustaches. Unfortunately it feels as though Wallace was truly making this one up as he went along: what starts out as a "unjust man sentenced to prison" story suddenly changes channels (and protagonists!) into a "arch criminal versus brilliant investigator" story, and just as that's starting to catch fire it shifts *again* to a whodunit (and not a very good one, incidentally, mysteries as such were not Wallace's strength). As such, this can't be considered one of the better Wallaces, while he always sort of "made it up as he went along", his best books cohere a lot better than this one.
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