Reprint of the Year 2023: The Black Lizard (1934) by Edogawa Rampo (translated by Ian Hughes)

Kate at Cross-Examining Crime is once again running her Reprint of theYear competition and both of my choices are from the revived Green Penguin range.

The second is a novel by the man with the best pen name in the business, featuring his regular sleuth Kogoro Akechi, a master of disguise, who is confronted by his evil female counterpart, the Black Lizard.

He gets the better of their first encounter, but is bested a second time round, leaving his enemy in possession of both the Star of Egypt diamond and his employer’s daughter. Can he get close enough to her to win them both back?

This is definitely a thriller rather than a detective story, and reminded me the short story collection Again the Ringer by Edgar Wallace (so much so that I re-bought it), as it is episodic and each time you are wondering who is really who and which of them has the upper hand. One occurence has parallels with my favourite scene from Mission: Impossible 2.

The Dark Angel comes across ultimately as a prototype Bond villain, complete with secret base, and some very bizarre personal tastes.

Overall this is a fun, but highly improbable romp, with Rampo sending himself up when he refers to himself anonymously:

“There is a certain novelist whose works include a story called ‘The H____ C____’ The story is about a villain who _____ and gets up to mischief. The Black Lizard has artfully enacted this novelist’s nonsensical imaginings.”