First brought to my attention when one of its escapades was included in the Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime [ss] (2009), Four Square Jane (1929) by Edgar Wallace is a novel in reality comprising a series of separate adventures of our eponymous thief as she seeks to relieve the wealthy of their property in the interests of charitable endeavours.

The sensible thing, then, would probably be to talk about each episode separately, since they were not originally written as one continuous narrative and, usually, a clear break wraps up one story before another begins. I mean, that’s not quite accurate, but it’s close enough…so, let’s go:

The opening chapter, originally published as ‘The Theft of the Lewinstein Jewels’ (1919), introduces us to Joseph Lewinstein, who has enjoyed an “almost meteoric rise in the world of high finance, if not in the corresponding world of society” and is throwing a lavish party to which many influential people are invited in the hope of improving his social standing. The only problem? Four Square Jane has been preying on the rich of late and might, just might, put in an appearance and spoil his intended ascension.

“She’s no common burglar,” said Mr Lewinstein shaking his head, whether in admonition or admiration it was difficult to say. “My friend, Lord Belchester…told me it was an absolute mystery how his wife lost those emeralds of hers… He thinks that the thief was one of his guests.”

The means by which — spoilers…? — Jane enters the party and makes away with the jewels won’t catch anyone by surprise, but is at least achieved without the prolixity that would have rendered this type of fun, quick story far less enjoyable 30 years earlier. Wallace shows himself as no particular prose-smith, but the functionality of his setup and the simple lines upon which his story develops are clean, easily-followed, and achieved while treating the reader as an intelligent individual who doesn’t need everything spelling out to them. So, not exactly notable, but encouraging.

Chapter 2, a.k.a. ‘Jane in Custody’ (1919), at least continues some through-lines, with Joseph Lewinstein being present at the home of Lord Claythorpe, whose wife had jewels stolen in the opening tale. Here, once again Jane’s presence will be felt, though this time Claythorpe is better-prepared, and manages to both capture our crook and lock her in a safe room with a policeman guarding her. So what if that happens to be the room in which Claythorpe keeps his jewels? There are ten safes, and he opens three at random every evening and puts the valuables in one of those, so that the odds are “nine to one against [a burglar] finding the correct safe”.

Again, this is light and fun, and you wonder how much of this sort of thing is going to be perpetrated in the ensuing stories. Interesting, too, to see the theme of stingy millionaires carried through from The Dark Angel (1930) by James Ronald — clearly this was a fixation with writers at the time. A not unmerited one, I’m sure, but it was interesting to read two books so proximally (this is reviewed a couple of months later, but I actually read it immediately after TDA) that follow this theme in such similar veins.

T’was ‘The Stolen Romney’ (1919) which first brought Jane to my attention, and to that we return in chapter 3, with Chief Superintendent Peter Dawes being given free rein to apply his not inconsiderable reputation to the matter of Jane and her exploits. Keen to “keep his mind unhampered and unprejudiced by the many and often contradictory ‘clues’ which everyone who had been affected by Four-Square Jane’s robberies insisted on discussing with him”, Dawes reasons that Jane will take interest in a rare painting about to be put on display and, well, yes, she does.

Some nice touches with character here (“Is that how you pronounce it?”), and the story nips along again at a good lick. It’s one of those solutions that relies a lot on timing that you don’t get a great sense of in the written word — at least, not the way Wallace writes it — but it continues the theme of enjoyable romps clearly written with a smile on the author’s face. I enjoyed it first time, I enjoyed it second time; what more can you ask for?

The sense of individual pieces also being part of a whole continues in chapter 4, which I take was originally published as ‘The Sister of Mercy’ (1920). We start with Miss Joyce Wilberforce, who is due to marry the son of Lord Claythorpe — from whom a necklace that was due to be a wedding present to his daughter-in-law was stolen in chapter 2 — being less than delighted at her impending nuptials.

“[Y]ou are going to be married tomorrow, and tomorrow you will be a rich woman in your own right. One might imagine [from your conduct] that you were going to be hanged.”

There’s an interesting perspective here on women being forced into marriages for social position (“You have betrayed the trust of one who had faith in you and have utilised the provisions of his foolish will in order to enrich your family.”), and you can’t help but be rather buoyed by the spanner that finds its way into the works.

‘The Murder in James Street’ (1920) becomes chapter 5. Proceedings are enriched by a theory put forth by Dawes, and then more potentialities opened up by Claythorpe’s relationship with his confidential clerk, Donald Remington. At times like this, you start to wonder how much extra writing Wallace did to make this feel more like a novel, because it really does, and a most entertaining one at that. Murder results, our thief is implicated, and the personage of Jamieson Steele — who has been mentioned at intervals — takes on a more significant shape. And then the novelistic rewriting that one suspected previously comes fuller to the fore when this plot seems to merge into…

…‘Robbing the Royal Mail’ (1920), with Jane and an accomplice reliving a mail van of one particular letter that she says “was very compromising to me”. The plot, it acquires the thickness! True, this is more of a connecting passage than a story in its own right, but things are definitely moving, and the attentive reader might begin to discern their shape. Especially here, this feels like some of these stories were rewritten to make this a novel overall, so I’m going to look very silly when someone informs me in the comments that not a single word was altered and this was exactly how they originally appeared in print. Damn my hubris!

Chapter 7 is ‘The Actress’s Emerald Necklace’ (1920), and it’s here that things really start to pull together. A wonderful piece of sangfroid had me laughing out oud, Dawes comes into his own as an investigator of no small intelligence — there’s a sub-Thorndykian piece of reasoning or two that’s all the more appreciated because of how out of Wallace’s line I expected this sort of thing to be — and the shape of events finally coalesces so that surely even the most inattentive reader can figure out what’s going on now.

I also rather enjoyed Joseph Lewinstein from earlier in the book reappearing and being given more substance than one might expect, again handled with some genuine subtlety by Wallace. The ‘grasping financier archetype’ feels like it was fairly firmly entrenched by this time, so seeing someone bother to round out such a character in this way is rather pleasant, and especially when it’s done by someone with Wallace’s reputation for not exactly paying close attention to his characterisation.

It’s in chapter 8, ‘The Secret of a Box of Cigars’ (1920), that the eventual threads converge, aided by some playful conceits (“They won’t hurt you, take a handful.”) and the sort of brisk and breezy characterisation that made me realise that I’d actually come to quite like these people in the little time I’d spent with them. Just to make sure you’re paying attention, Wallace lets you know that Dawes now knows the shape of events, and a clever principle with a fingerprint ties the final piece in place. There can be no doubt where this is heading now, but I sort of wanted it not to end, so much fun was I having.

Alas, we come to ‘The End’ (1920), and it’s as spry as the adventures to this point have been. Four Square Jane herself is cornered, confesses, and the jig is up…unless there’s an extra fillip at the end of the tale. I will say that I’m not usually a fan of ‘Someone sends a letter to explain things’ as a narrative device, but at the end of this whirligig of zestful adventuring and moderate peril I’m so favourably inclined to Jane and the world she inhabits that I’d probably even be happy if someone woke up and It Was All a Dream.

Well, okay, no, that would be terrible, but the book has been so much fun, and the eventual final turn of things feels so right, that it’s difficult to want to criticise it on too many fronts. A lovely, fitting end to what has been a very enjoyable time indeed, not least because it also turned out I had completely overlooked something from pretty much the first page. Clever that and, while of arguably no real consequence, it was a wonderful moment of realisation when it finally hit me what an inattentive boob I’d been.

The back cover of my House of Stratus edition pictured above informs me that Wallace wrote “more than 170 books”, and it’s to be wondered how many of them display the same joie de vivre, playful spirit, and sprightly tone of this. I’d a whole series about Four Square Jane indulging in these sorts of shenanigans — there’s an Arsene Lupin-esque quality to the way she thumbs her nose at her supposed betters — and so of course this is all Wallace wrote about the character.

So, Internet Hive Mind, where do I head next with the works of Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace? I have a copy of The Clue of the New Pin (1923) so that will likely be my next exposure to his brand of lunacy, but where thereafter? I’m looking for a Four Square Jane-style experience, so any guidance will be greatly appreciated.