by Edgar Wallace
1913 (reprinted 1930) • Doubleday, Doran & Company
303 pages (hardcover)
Trouble is brewing at the home of Sir Ralph Morte-Mannery, a judge in the English court system. A working-class Englishman, George Mansingham, has been given a conveniently harsh sentence by Sir Ralph after breaking into his house during the night. Mansingham claims that he was not breaking in to steal, but to receive an envelope from a strange man who would appear inside. After the case draws notice in the press, an Italian crime investigator visits the Morte-Mannery estate, suggesting that the burglary was a lot more than simple theft.
If you've ever seen King King, you've already experienced the work of Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace, a London journalist who authored some 175 novels, many of which were best-sellers. Though Wallace is usually known for his gorilla in a screenplay that he never actually completed, he was far more accomplished as a crime writer and occasional playwright. So popular was Wallace in his home country during the 1920s that it was said one-fourth of the books read in England were of his authorship. His dark, suspenseful, and emotional works have also been translated into many languages and proved a reliable source for film and television, particularly in Italy and Germany.The Fourth Plague is an intriguing crime novel that was published in 1913, during the early years of Wallace's career as a novelist. A tight 303 pages in its 1930 Doubleday printing, The Fourth Plague begins with a prologue set in Italy and follows with 19 numbered chapters taking place in England. Plague is a strange combination of police procedural and spy thriller, with the Morte-Mannerys' situation taking on much larger importance as the story unfolds. The themes seem to reflect growing social concerns at the outbreak of World War I, though they are never examined in detail. The prevailing tone is somber, with its atmosphere lightened by moments of wry humor.
On the whole, The Fourth Plague is a serviceable novel with intricate plotting and plenty of things going on. The story is told in third-person omniscient, which allows for much greater character development than first-person crime, such as the Marlowe novels of Raymond Chandler. All of the main characters and even a few of the supporting cast are painted in detail, helping us to empathize with their plights and appreciate their feelings.
Wallace injects the characters with a mature balance of good and bad qualities, making neither the hero totally admirable nor the villain completely repugnant. The English settings, while often isolated, are vivid and Wallace is at his best when describing action at night. The familiar, post-Victorian style common in Lawrence, Forster, and Maugham can be found here with an added briskness helped by Wallace's time as a reporter.
Oddly enough, the novel does not maintain a level of suspense that readers would expect. In using a third-person narrative, Wallace is forced at key moments to hide information from the reader that would otherwise diffuse the tension of a given scene. While holding back on certain details to keep readers in the dark, we can often tell that information is being hidden and it makes the narrative look flimsy.
Wallace also does a poor job of masking characters until the point of when they need to be revealed. Though the revelations might come later than we expect or in a different form, they can often be figured out from miles away. While it is possible that Wallace chose to have fun with readers and make the guesswork easy, it is hard to figure out from his stern prose if that teasing was meant. In fairness, the ending does not have this problem at all; it is highly dramatic, overblown in a likeable way, and completely unexpected.
As with most crime novels, The Fourth Plague can't be taken as high literature. There is something very comforting in Wallace, an author who rolled out his crime stories in a dignified manner with all loose ends neatly tied up. We are willing to excuse those flaws of his genre, such as events that happen a bit too conveniently for the plot's sake and a hero who inspires fear in all of his enemies but is only one person whom could easily be killed off...
There is no use trying to poke holes in the legacy of Edgar Wallace, since we are reading a crime author and not works by Lawrence or Maugham. Wallace is engaging, knows his business, and can tell an entertaining story - which is exactly what we're looking for when reading him. Ironically, Wallace is known nowadays through the film and TV adaptations of his work rather than the novels themselves, but he is certainly worth hunting down if you're into crime or espionage.
I found my copy of The Fourth Plague in a Barnes & Noble sale annex. It is a hardcover edition released in 1930 by Doubleday, Doran & Company as part of the Crime Club series of novels. More recently, Plague has been marketed by House of Stratus in a 2008 softcover volume. Copies from several publishers can be found on the Internet and through used book stores specializing in crime fiction.
