The Lone Wolf was a contemporary of Boston Blackie. Like Blackie, the Lone Wolf was a thief turned amateur detective who appeared in silent films, talkies, radio, and eventually television. Like Blackie, the Lone Wolf began in book form.

The Lone Wolf: A Melodrama” by Joseph Vance follows the career of Michael Lanyard, a boy abandoned in Paris to a life of hard labor, who became an apprentice thief and then a master thief who operated alone. He did this on the advice of his mentor who warned Lanyard of the pitfalls of letting his guard down. So Lanyard built a life of crime accompanied by a legitimate front that was a life of luxury, fine art, and expensive homes and solitude, thus why he became known as the Lone Wolf.

However, the Lone Wolf finds his secret veil pierced, and an international criminal syndicate is determined to force him to join with them…or not be able to either work or escape from Paris. On the run, from both the Paris police and this gang of criminals, Lanyard falls in love with the mysterious Lucille Bannon and vows to change his ways to make himself worthy of her. However, it becomes apparent she is not all she seems.

The Lone Wolf has a lot going for it. There’s plenty of plot-related mysteries and character questions to keep readers guessing and engaged. Lanyard is an interesting and sympathetic protagonist. He reminds me of Leslie Charteris’s early portrayal of the Saint, except the Lone Wolf is “tempted” to reform far earlier in his career than Simon Templar.

As the book’s subtitle promises, it has melodramatic moments and speeches which had me rolling my eyes, but Vance did warn readers upfront. The character of Lucille Bannon lacks definition, but that’s part of her being a woman of mystery, I guess. And the villains were more obstacles than real characters.

Despite its flaws, I enjoyed The Lone Wolf. The book has an amazing amount of action: fights, foot chases, car chases, attempted burglaries, and even an airplane chase make this truly action packed, add to that a lot of mystery, romance, and a fair splattering of comedy, and overall The Lone Wolf is an entertaining book that holds far better than you would expect an obscure book from more than a century ago to do.

Rating 3.75 out of 5.0

This book is available for free download through Project Gutenberg.

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