"In the future, the writer, then 30, would become one of the most prolific authors of his time-he'd even be given the nickname " the King of Thrillers" and co-write the screenplay for 1933's King Kong (his final writing project before his death in 1932). But at the beginning of the 20th century, Wallace had been primarily working as a journalist and war correspondent."
""Emboldened by this success," he later wrote, "I sat down to turn a short story I had written, and which had been rejected by every magazine in London, into a longer one." It became his first novel, The Four Just Men, published by the London-based Tallis Press in 1905. And rather than simply advertising his book the traditional way, Wallace had something a little more unusual in mind."
Edgar Wallace was a 30-year-old journalist and war correspondent who produced fiction on the side to earn extra money; one story, "Smithy," sold around 30,000 copies. He expanded a previously rejected short story into his first novel, The Four Just Men, published by the Tallis Press in 1905. The novel follows four vigilantes who exact extrajudicial justice and who decide to murder a British minister, Sir Philip Ramon, over an unjust law. Wallace pursued an unusual marketing campaign for the novel that nearly caused his financial collapse. He later became widely known as "the King of Thrillers."
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