Edgar Wallace Books In Order

Publication Order of The Four Just Men Books

Publication Order of T.B. Smith Books

Publication Order of Commissioner Sanders Books

Publication Order of Lieutenant Bones Books

Publication Order of J.G. Reeder Books

Publication Order of Elk Books

Publication Order of Educated Evans Books

Publication Order of Supt. Minter Books

Publication Order of The Ringer Books

Publication Order of Smithy Books

Publication Order of Mystery League Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Chapbooks

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Recommendations

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Edgar Wallace was a British writer and one of the most popular and prolific writers of the 20th century. Doubling up as a crime writer, playwright, and journalist, he wrote over 175 novels, 40 short story collections, 24 plays, and numerous articles in journals and newspapers in less than 3 decades of writing. At the height of his powers, a popular claim was that he penned a quarter of all the books read in England. Over 85 years after his death, his name is often invoked as he still towers like a colossus in the mystery genre. Wallace was born a bastard in Greenwich, London in 1875, the product of a union between two actors. His mother christened him Richard Horatio Edgar Freeman and put him in foster care when he was just a week old. Despite living with a foster family, his extrovert nature meant he had a relatively enjoyable childhood. He worked a number of odd jobs in his youth before joining up with the army that sent him to South Africa. He soon found out that soldiering was not for him and was soon back in London, where he got a job as a crime reporter for the newly established Daily Mail. It was as a reporter that he shortened his name to “Edgar Wallace”, a last name that he took from the author of “Ben Hur”, General Lew Wallace.

The turn of the 20th century was not a very good period for Wallace, who was a newly married man and a father who had developed a taste for the finer things in life. Edgar Wallace was of the belief that any attempt at controlling spending was a bad omen, as it meant that his fortunes would one day diminish. He would head back to South Africa in 1902 as a newspaper editor only to come back to England when Eleanor his daughter fell ill and died. In 1904, he took a job for a newspaper covering the Russo-Japanese War, which took him and his wife to continental Europe. It was in Europe that made acquaintance with a group of spies. His encounter became the basis for his first mystery novel; the 1905 published “The Four Just Men”. The novel was to be just the first of the author’s collection of secret organization series. The novel is a narrative of a group of super-rich vigilantes that played their part in making the world a better place through assassinating people responsible for unpunishable wrongs. His decision to promote and publish the novel without any help from the major publishing houses proved a disaster, as he ran out of funds forcing him to declare bankruptcy.

Undeterred with his failure Wallace buckled up and began churning out novel after novel until he hit a home run with the 1911 published title “Sanders of the River” that was a chronicle of his time in South Africa. He would follow the novel with the Just Men Adventures that featured Scotland Yard’s Inspector Elk as the chief protagonist. By the 20s, his literary career had picked up steam as he averaged 18 novels a year by 1926, and was up to 34 by 1929. At the time, only John Creasey and Georges Simenon could have been said to be more prolific. Wallace’s legendary concentration and work ethic was notoriously fueled by smoking between 80 to 100 cigarettes a day and between 30 to 40 cups of sweetened tea. In fact, a dramatically elongated cigarette holder was his most famous trademark. Despite the workload that he put on himself, he was known to never make notes and to keep the plots of his novels in his head. He would typically write out the first page of a novel in his own hand, before dictating the rest of the novel into a machine or to a secretary.

Edgar Wallace’s fictional worlds are full of innovatively named criminal organizations such as the “Crimson Circle”, the “Red Hand”, and the “Fellowship of the Frog”. They are also peopled with colorful super villains that include gangsters, crooks, plucky heroines, intrepid amateur sleuths and seemingly respectable men living double lives. Going against the conventions of the time, Wallace was the first to make a police officer the lead protagonist in his novels as opposed to an amateur sleuth. In 1925, he created his most famous series “The Four Just Men”. The lead protagonists in the novels are four rich men that believe that it is up to them to mete out punishment for crimes, for which the law gives, inadequate or no punishment. They style themselves as the Council of Justice that is indifferent to the opinions of men preferring passionless intellect. They constantly pit their intellect against the most powerful and cunning underworld organizations that have minds that are just as smart. To anyone that violates the sacred conventions, their answer is swift death. Away from his writing, he also worked in Hollywood with his most important contributions being the script for the movie King Kong and the Hound of Baskervilles. Many movies on the script of King Kong as well as several of his other novels have been made over the years. He died of pneumonia in his Beverly Hills home in 1932 aged 56.

“The Four Just Men” is one of Edgar Wallace’s most popular novels that introduce the four self-styled men of the Council of Justice. The group of men is composed of psychopaths who use their psychopathy to murder people who have done grievous wrong to others and would get away with it were it left to the law. At the beginning of the novel, the four just men have been reduced to three after one of their own is caught in a shootout forcing them to hire a fourth – a highly skilled but more common serial killer. The group’s first target is Sir Phillip Ramon, the Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs ,who has riled the four with his plans to push through a bill that would put Spanish rebels fighting against repression in Spain at risk in the UK. The council delivers a warning to the secretary warning him of dire consequences if he continues on his path. With a locked room mystery and serialization in the Daily Mail, the novel is a hair-raising classic from Wallace.

“The Council of Justice” is the fast paced, suspenseful, and thrilling sequel to the first novel in the Four Just Men series of novels. The council of four has considerably toned down on their vigilante stance, even though they still work outside the law. They go after The Red 100 a terrorist organization led by The Woman of Graz. Despite a softened vigilante streak, they still go in hard against the terrorists with strategic assassinations and decisive strikes. Following a high stakes coup, one of the four is taken into police custody and is subsequently held in a maximum-security prison. Never known for sitting on their laurels, the four announce that they will get him off – illegally of course. What follows is an exceptional tale full of suspense that will get the heart of many a thriller fan racing.