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Ep. 640, The Four Just Men, part 1of4, by Edgar Wallace
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How does a vigilante group styling themselves The Four Just Men raise the stakes against an inflammatory act of Parliament? Edgar Wallace, today on The Classic Tales Podcast.
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame is coming along. I\\u2019m running a little behind this week. It\\u2019s tricky to try and sneak in a few hours to record over the weekend. I\\u2019m going to release this in two shots, as a Part One and Part Two, since it runs around 20 hours. So keep an eye open for Part One.
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Today\\u2019s story is Edgar Wallace who co-wrote the groundbreaking story of King Kong with Merriam C. Cooper. Wallace was a prolific author, and at the time of his death, was known as \\u201cThe King of Thrillers\\u201d.\\xa0
When Wallace finished writing The Four Just Men, he was sure he had a hit. The problem was, nobody else thought so. He couldn\\u2019t get it published. So, he self published it, and decided to advertise the novel on an unprecedented scale. He came up with a bold advertising gimmick: a\\xa0\\xa3500 reward was offered to any reader who could guess how the murder in the novel was committed. Wallace was working for The Daily Mail newspaper at the time, and here he published the serialized version of the story along with the competition.
Well, it didn\\u2019t work out quite like he\\u2019d anticipated. While the book did well, it didn\\u2019t do that well. Furthermore, Wallace wasn\\u2019t quite as clever as he thought. Some people were guessing the ending. After three months, Wallace still hadn\\u2019t recouped his advertising investment, and he had more contest winners than he was planning for. So, the official list of winners kind of went unpublished, which kind of made a lot of people lose trust in The Daily Mail, which is really a bad thing when you\\u2019re, you know, a news source.
In the end, Wallace had to borrow \\xa35,000 from his boss, so the newspaper could save face with their readers. Wallace\\u2019s working relationship with the paper soured after that, when it became evident that Wallace was in no hurry to pay the money back. But while the publishing of The Four Just Men was a bit of a fiasco, it did establish Wallace\\u2019s name as a writer.
The reason I chose this story was because while I was reading it, I was constantly fighting with myself. This was Wallace\\u2019s intention. Of The Four Just Men, he said, \\u201cThe most lawless of us would hesitate to defend them, but the greater humanitarian could scarcely condemn them.\\u201d We aren\\u2019t supposed to be completely for or against them.
The story takes place before the two World Wars, when anarchists were big news in Europe. Today, we would likely dub them terrorists. They are vigilantes, who seek their own version of justice from the world. I hope you like it.
Warning: there are a couple offensive racial epithets in today\\u2019s episode, including the \\u201cn\\u201d word.\\xa0
And now, The Four Just Men, part 1 of 4, by Edgar Wallace.
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