Mon 9 Jun 2025
FLOYD WALLACE – Wired for Scandal. Ace Double D-357. Paperback original; 1st printing, 1959. Published back-to-back with Lady in Peril, by Lester Dent.
A sixteen-year-old boy overhears a bugging device transmitting a psychoanalyst’s conversation with a patient and so gets messed up withe the unsympathetic police in a case of blackmail and murder.
The blackmailer’s identity is fairly obvious, but the story’s strength lies in its portrayal of a bored kid, with little to do, and no one to listen. Even listening to his shortwave receiver adds to his frustration – all those people talking, but no one wanting to pay him any attention.
On the minus side, we have a police lieutenant willing to risk the boy’s life to catch the real criminal. Personal dislike does not seem motive enough, and contradicts what otherwise is great efficiency.
Rating: ***
June 9th, 2025 at 9:33 pm
From the Goodreads website:
“F. L. Wallace, sometimes credited as Floyd Wallace, was a noted science fiction and mystery writer. He was born in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1915, and died in Tustin, California, in 2004. Wallace spent most of his life in California as a writer and mechanical engineer after attending the University of Iowa.
“His first published story, “Hideaway,” appeared in the magazine Astounding. Galaxy Science Fiction and other science fiction magazines published subsequent stories of his including “Delay in Transit,” “Bolden’s Pets,” and “Tangle Hold.” His mystery works include “Driving Lesson,” a second-prize winner in the twelfth annual short story contest held by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. His novel, Address: Centauri, was published by Gnome Press in 1955. His works have been translated into numerous languages and his stories are available today around the world in anthologies.”
He wrote at least one other mystery novel, that being Three Times A Victim, Ace Books, 1957.
June 10th, 2025 at 5:19 am
For some reason, he went from a promising career as a science fiction writer to a far less successful one as a mystery writer. One has to ask, why?
June 10th, 2025 at 1:04 pm
You ask good questions, Jerry.
June 11th, 2025 at 10:33 am
I’m a big fan of F. L. Wallace’s “Delay in Transit.” Great SF story! Wallace, like many SF writers of that era, probably tried to diversify their writing and working in several fiction markets. But, as you point out, Wallace’s mysteries were not as good as his SF stories.
June 13th, 2025 at 10:03 pm
Not quite but almost.