The Green Rust

A chemist has bred a rust that will destroy the world's wheat, a girl stands to inherit a fortune if she marries before a deadline, and an American detective has ten days. Wallace was illegitimate, raised by a Billingsgate fish porter and out of school at twelve; he wrote fast enough that at one point a quarter of all books borrowed in England were his. This is the thriller machine running clean. Fifty-eight plates by painters from Munch to Harold Harvey follow the wheat fields, harbours and lamplit streets that Wallace's chase runs through.