It has been said that Wallace was the first British crime novelist to use policemen rather than brilliant amateur sleuths as most other writers of the time did. However his heroes were far from ordinary - they were mostly special investigators of some sort who worked outside the normal police force. Most of his novels are independent stand-alone stories. With the exception of his Sanders of Africa adventures, he seldom used series heroes.

Shortly after Edgar Wallace joined the army he was ordered to South Africa with the medical corps, Simons Town, his station, was in those days the greatest "loaf" known to orderlies the wide world over.  Having little to do, Wallace began to send verse to Cape Town papers and finally got a standing order for thirty-six inches of political poetry a week.  But the commander-in-chief, seeing some of the verse, sent word privately that it was not seemly for a soldier to interest himself in politics.

Wallace applied for discharge, borrowed 20, and set out to discover Africa for himself and write about it.  With the outbreak of the Boer War he went to the front as one of the leading war correspondents but he kept on writing these adventures of Commissioner Sanders which embodied all of his accumulated knowledge of the fascinating jungle world.

During his life he wrote many bestsellers including an immense number of novels in the last ten years of his life.  His output is often compared to that of other prolific authors. There is a famous anecdote in which visitors to his home actually observed him dictate a novel in the course of a weekend.  He made millions and yet when he died he owed millions.  He passed away in 1932 in Hollywood, California during the filming of perhaps his best known story, King Kong.  In 1929, he appeared on the cover of Time Magazine's April 15th issue.  In 1969 the Edgar Wallace Society was formed by his youngest daughter Penelope Wallace.