Degerfors Bibliotek

A gripping, fast-paced mystery by the prolific Edgar Wallace, 'The Three Oak Mystery' puts forth a tale of two whimsical London detectives, Socrates and Lexington Smith, who become inadvertently intertwined in a chain of inexplicable paranormal events one evening whilst staying overnight at a friend's manor house.

"Come three oaks" a ghostly light dashing across the lawn spells in Morse code. Shaken by the happenings of the night before, the brothers elect to take a walk down the same route the following morning and, horrified, discover the body of a petrified elderly gentleman tied to an oak tree, a purple bullet wound gleaming in the sunlight. This gruesome unearthing is only the first of a menagerie of mysterious occurrences which the two men stumble upon that day, leaving them with no choice but to bite the bullet and unravel the curse of the Three Oaks.

Readers will be delighted to find that Wallace’s work has been adapted for film many times with actors like Jack Black, Adrien Brody and Jamie Bell portraying characters from his books.


Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was an English writer so prolific that one of his publishers claimed that he was behind a quarter of all books sold in England. An author, journalist and poet, he wrote countless novels, short stories, screen plays, stage plays and historical non-fiction. Today, more than 160 films have been made from his work. He died suddenly in Hollywood in 1932, during the initial drafting of his most famous work, 'King Kong'.