This is the sequel to Wallace's debut novel, The Four Just Men, starring three of the original quartet (Manfred, Gonsalez and Poiccart) who recruit a fourth whose alias is Courtlander. The FJM are vigilantes dedicated to murdering those who are getting away with criminal activities (a bit like the eponymous hero of the Saint books by Leslie Charteris). In this novel they are up against the Red Hundred, an anarchist group. Various adventures ensue while Scotland Yard looks on helplessly. Finally, justice having been meted out and a proposed assassination averted, Manfred is captured while meeting his arch-rival and potential love interest The Woman of Gratz. He is tried for murder and convicted. Can he escape the hangman's noose?
It is a naive thriller relying on expert chemists creating swift-acting poisons and wonderful explosives, me who are masters of disguise, fluent in many languages, rich and well-supplied with information from a huge range of naturally impeccable sources. Modern readers are usually too sophisticated to suspend their disbelief so easily. But it does give wonderful insights into London in the year before the First World Wars, a place well used to terrorist 'outrages' (through bombs being dropped from Zeppelins were a little premature), a country where anarchists held their conferences and everyone had access to a revolver.
Told in mostly simple language, in short chapters, with a very direct style in which 'tell' is often privileged over 'show', this is very easy to read. With the exception, perhaps, of the Woman of Gratz, the characters are one-dimensional and clearly divided into goodies and baddies, despite the moral ambiguity of making vigilante outlaws the heroes. (But on the other hand, what else is the classic English folk hero Robin Hood?) There is an even-handedness in making both heroes and villains exotic foreigners which was rarely emulated in contemporary and subsequent alternatives, such as Sexton Blake and James Bond where the English goody commonly battles baddies from abroad. The fundamental motivation for continuing to read is not to find out whether the heroes will eventually triumph but to solve the convoluted puzzle of how they will achieve their aims. The focus is therefore on why a huge hole has appeared in the building in which two bodies are found, why a strange house has been constructed in the Spanish countryside, and how Manfred will effect his escape?
Selected Quotes:
- "There are no straight roads, and you cannot judge where lies your destination by the direction the first line of path takes." (Ch 2)
- "His liabilities were of no account because the necessity for discharging them never occurred to him." (Ch 5)
- "Eden in sight - he pleaded for an Eve." (Ch 6)
- "He was as close ... as the inside washer of a vacuum pump." (Ch 7)
- "Possessed of the indifference to public opinion which is equally the equipment of your fool and your truly great man." (Ch 9)
- "The sons of fathers who were the sons of fathers who had some time ruled by might, and left the legacy of their dominion to their haphazard progeny." (Ch 10) Wallace is clearly in thrall to aristocrats and royals and great men, perhaps because of, perhaps in spite of, his own humble and confused beginnings ... but he could see the other side of the argument.
- "If in England you race a horse and it wins your Derby, must the stock of that horse be acclaimed winners of the race from birth?" (Ch 10) It's a good argument against a hereditary monarchy!
- "Spoken like a cheap little magazine detective." (Ch 18)
NB: An electrolier is a chandelier in which the lights are electrical (rather than candles).
One of the classic progenitors of thriller fiction.
February 2024; 310 pages
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