Thrilled

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 412, 16 May 1947, Page 9

Thrilled

So the black flag has been hoisted and 2YA’s My Son, My Son is no more; and Monday night serial addicts emerge from their wanderings in the murky caverns of the parental mind to find themselves in the clean upper air of

of Edgar Wallace’s London ___ dockside, where the murk is purely physical, and subject to instantaneous’ dissolution when pierced by the clean bright flashlights of Inspector Wade and the Boys in Blue. Naturall listeners are thrill-

ed. For one thing, mere actional suspense is a much easier burden for the listener to bear from week to week than the emotional variety. Emotional forces are largely incalculable; there is mo way, short of the final instalment, of evaluating X. So the listener spends week after week grappling with the unknown, knowing no peace till the end is reached. But the serialisation of a straight adventure yarn is a horse of a brighter colour. If a fepresents Inspector Wade and b the Indiarubber Men, then it is obvious that a must always be greater than b, This naturally, is a great comfort to the listener; and perhaps Edgar Wallace’s chief claim to radio inclusion is not so much that it is impossible not to be thrilled by him at the time, as that it is equally impossible to suffer the agonies of suspense from one Monday to the next.