The Four Just Men - Edgar Wallace Paperback – November 8, 2007

This is an excellent quick novel that moves right along about the Four Just Men who seek to exact justice on wrongdoers in England at the turn of the century. When they threaten a politician due to a bill he has brought before the government which they believe to be wrong, a massive panic sweeps through the nation and the search is on.

From beginning to end, several surprises abound in this race against time thriller that keeps you guessing. Mr. Wallace is said to have written over 170 novels and over a thousand short stories. I also read his thriller Jack O'Judgement which was excellent as well. And for the price, this is a must for die hard crime fiction fans.

A different kind of murder mystery because we knew who was the target and who were the murderers. Outstanding! A page turner.

When the British Foreign Secretary decides to push through a law which will allow the enforced return of political refugees to their countries of origin, he becomes a target of the Four Just Men – a group of vigilantes who set out to right what they perceive as wrongs that the normal systems of justice can't touch. The story is a kind of cat-and-mouse game where the reader, along with the entire British public, waits to see if the Four Just Men succeed in carrying out their threat to assassinate the Foreign Secretary.

This was a rather odd read for me, in that I hated the premise – vigilantes are not my cup of tea – and yet found the storytelling compelling enough that I found myself racing through it. It's well written and the pacing is excellent. Wallace sits on the fence himself as to the rights and wrongs of it – he shows both sides, but doesn't take too strong a stance in favour of either. I believe in later books he chose cases that weren't quite so murky, where it was clearer that the victims of the Just Men deserved their fate, and I suspect I might prefer those.

This one, however, despite having been published way back in 1905, has a surprisingly relevant plot. The purpose of the legislation is to prevent political agitators from using the safety of foreign countries to stir up revolutions back in their own nation. Having been reading a lot about the Russian Revolution recently, it made me think very much of those Russians, like Lenin, who spent their time in the safety of exile encouraging their countrymen back home to commit acts of terrorism against the state. But I also couldn't help thinking of the West's current moral struggle over the question of allowing in refugees at a time when the fear of terrorism is high, or the difficulty of expelling people even when it's known they are attempting to radicalise others.

It's a quick read – somewhere between a long novella and a short novel. There is a mystery of sorts over how the Just Men plan to carry out the assassination. Martin Edwards tells us in his book The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books that, as an advertising ploy, Wallace offered cash prizes to readers who could work out the solution. Apparently, so many did that it nearly bankrupted him. I wish I'd been around at the time, because I thought it was blindingly obvious. I suspect, though, that might be because the key is more commonplace now than it would have been back then. Forgive the vagueness, but to say more would be a major spoiler.

The rest of the plotting works much more effectively. There is a real sense of the building tension as the deadline approaches. The Foreign Secretary is not physically brave, but shows a good deal of moral courage in the end. The police are shown as competent and vigilant, good men determined to protect the Secretary even at the expense of their own lives, if necessary. The press get involved and we see their dilemma of being ordinary good people who don't want to see murder done but also journalists who do want a huge front page story! Wallace handles all these ethical questions well and believably, I thought. The Just Men themselves are more shadowy, with no real background given as to why they've set themselves up as judge and executioner or how they got together. I found them far less credible. But I was pulled along in the need to know whether the Secretary would survive.

An intriguing read that provoked more thought than I was anticipating. I don't think I'm sufficiently enthusiastic to want to read more of the adventures of the Four Just Men, but overall I found this one interesting and entertaining enough to be glad to have read it, and to recognise its claim to be a classic of the genre. And, on that basis, recommended.

Could not get into it.

As Edgar Wallace tells it in his short novel, in the early years of the last century, this fearsome foursome --- George Manfred, Leon Gonsalez, Raymond Poiccart, and a man known simply as Thery --- assassinated the leader of the Servian Regicides, shot a "poet-philosopher" whose sick thinking corrupted a generation of young people, and hanged a leader of the French Army in the Place de la Concorde.

Vigilantes? You can call them that. But they don't act like hate-filled zealots. The Four Just Man are civilized. They advise their targets they are guilty of crimes. They tell their targets to reform. They alert their targets to the date of their death. They even give their targets a final warning --- delivered in person. As the author notes, "The honesty of the Four was their most terrible characteristic." Honesty --- how thrilling.

Now the Four Just Men have a new target: Philip Ramon, the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain. He is a public servant of unquestioned integrity with a conscience in working order. And yet he is about to commit a crime. A legal crime. But a crime nonetheless: His proposed legislation --- The Alien Extradition Act of 1905 --- would send a great Spanish social reformer, currently directing his followers from a safe perch in England, back to Spain. Once there, the corrupt government would kill him.

No reasonable Brit wants this to happen. But the Four Just Men are not like those of us who read the newspapers and bitch. Because they believe Sir Philip is a good man with a single blind spot, they have sent word to him: Drop the bill, or die. Naturally, almost every policeman in London is assigned to protect Sir Philip. The question is: Are they up to the task? Can they even identify the Four Just Men?

Very quickly you will get past the moral question --- terrorists? vigilantes? heroes? --- and find yourself lost in the whodunnit. And the howtheydunnit. You may even find yourself rooting for The Four Just Men.

How does it end? Glad you asked. Edgar Wallace held a contest when he published this novel, offering 500 pounds --- not a small sum in 1905 --- for the correct answers to some esoteric questions about the ending. Several readers guessed the answers. Wallace lost money. Or did he? For Wallace hyped 'The Four Just Men' as if it were a new flavor of Coca Cola. He took out full-page newspaper ads, put posters on subways and buses, even advertised in the movies. The publicity launched his career.

And Wallace went on to become the most famous writer in the world.

He was quick --- he could write a novel in a weekend. He was good. And he was prolific: 175 books, 24 plays and countless articles. The only title known to the contemporary reader? "King Kong." Maybe you've heard of it.

'We kill for justice,' claim the Four Just Men. On that morally uncertain but dramatically delicious boast rests the second of Edgar Wallace's titles that the world should remember --- and relish.

This is an early locked room mystery. The unusual aspect is that most of the book is taken up with the promise of a locked room murder. As with most mysteries of this date (it was published in 1905 and has been recently republished in a handsome edition by the Folio Society), the language is stilted and the plot unbelievable. The alert reader will readily see the solution. Overall, a decent evening's entertainment.