Edgar Wallace

The Keepers of the King's Peace Edgar Wallace

Another entry in Edgar Wallace's eminently popular Sanders of the River series, The Keepers of the King's Peace is an unlikely but ultimately engaging combination of a classic action-adventure tale and broad slapstick comedy. An elite crew of officers is charged with getting to the bottom of a female shaman's seemingly miraculous powers, but bumbling new addition Bones keeps getting in the way. Will they be able to stave off a mass rebellion before it's too late?To Isongo, which stands upon the tributary of that name, came a woman of the Isisi who had lost her husband through a providential tree falling upon him. I say "providential," for it was notorious that he was an evil man, a drinker of beer and a favourite of many bad persons. Also he made magic in the forest, and was reputedly the familiar of Bashunbi the devil brother of M'shimba-M'shamba. He beat his wives, and once had set fire to his house from sheer wickedness. So that when he was borne back to the village on a grass bier and the women of his house decked themselves with green leaves and arm in arm staggered and stamped through the village street in their death dance, there was a suspicion of hilarity in their song, and a more cheery step in their dance than the occasion called for.