Called Back. Martin Edwards

      

      Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by J. W. Arrowsmith 1883

      Published by The Detective Story Club Ltd

      for Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1929

      Introduction © Martin Edwards 2015

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1929, 2015

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008137113

      Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 9780008137120

      Version: 2015-07-06

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Introduction

       Chapter I: In Darkness and in Danger

       Chapter II: Drunk or Dreaming

       Chapter III: The Fairest Sight of All

      

       Chapter IV: Not for Love or Marriage

      

       Chapter V: By Law, Not Love

      

       Chapter VI: Unsatisfactory Answers

      

       Chapter VII: Claiming Relationship

      

       Chapter VIII: Called Back

      

       Chapter IX: A Black Lie

      

       Chapter X: In Search of the Truth

      

       Chapter XI: A Hell Upon Earth

      

       Chapter XII: The Name of the Man

      

       Chapter XIII: A Terrible Confession

      

       Chapter XIV: Does She Remember?

      

       Chapter XV: From Grief to Joy

      

       The Detective Story Club

      

       About the Publisher

       INTRODUCTION

      CALLED BACK, Hugh Conway’s most famous novel, was first published in 1883 as a ‘Christmas annual’ by a small Bristol publishing firm. The story rapidly earned such popular acclaim that ‘many prophesied the displacement of Wilkie Collins by the new star’, according to one of Collins’ obituaries. Certainly, the book caused much more of a sensation than the first detective novel of a young Scottish writer four years later, A Study in Scarlet. Yet today, Conway’s name is much less well-known than Wilkie Collins’, let alone Arthur Conan Doyle’s. So it is easy to forget that his reputation endured long after his premature death in 1885. Called Back entertained a later generation of readers when it was republished in the Detective Story Club series in 1929, and was also filmed twice, in 1914 and 1933.

      John Sutherland, an academic expert on Victorian fiction, has neatly summarised Called Back as a ‘sensational novel of murder, amnesia, Siberian-exile, political assassination and detection’. Who could possibly resist such a confection? The main events of the story take place in the 1860s; they are recalled later by the narrator, Gilbert Vaughan, a respectable Englishman with a hatred of mysteries ‘who has a romance hidden away beneath an outwardly prosaic life’.

      At the age of 25, Vaughan is struck blind. Leaving his house in London one night, he becomes lost, and witnesses a mysterious killing. Confident that they cannot be recognised, the perpetrators allow him to escape with his life. Vaughan later recovers his sight and, on a trip to Italy, encounters a beautiful girl with whom he promptly falls in love. Their romance fails to progress, but he soon comes across her again in London, where he also meets Dr Manuel Ceneri, who claims to be her uncle. Gradually, a dastardly scheme unfolds. Vaughan is not a wholly likeable man, but his persistence in his quest for the truth makes him a worthy protagonist. The long arm of coincidence reaches out time and again during the course of the narrative, prompting Vaughan’s occasional exclamation: ‘It was Fate!’ But the book is written with Victorian verve.

      The book rapidly sold more than a quarter of a million copies, making a fortune for its publisher, J. W. Arrowsmith. A paper-covered edition costing one shilling became the most renowned of the so-called ‘shilling shockers’ popular at the time. The story was also widely translated. Together with Joseph Comyns Carr, a prominent drama critic, theatre manager and playwright, Conway adapted the book for the stage, and long runs in both London and the provinces followed. There was even a burlesque version called The Scalded