Review: Jack O' Judgment

Jack O' Judgment by Edgar Wallace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A thundering good pulp novel from a master of the craft.

A ruthless gang of criminals have a clever approach to making illicit money. They buy stolen letters from burglars, and if they find anything compromising against someone who has some valuable property or a business, they blackmail them into selling it to the gang at far below its value. They've made a legitimate payment, they don't have to account for money given to them for apparently no reason, there's nothing illegal in paying less than an asset's worth for it if the seller agrees to the price, and all in all it's netting them a nice income.

The police know what's going on, but can't prove it in court. Likewise, they pretty strongly suspect that the death of a drug addict and dealer, "Snow" Gregory, was connected to the gang, but again, they can't prove anything. Enter the mysterious masked vigilante calling himself Jack O' Judgement, whose mark is the Jack of Clubs left at the scene of his vengeance. He isn't constrained by the laws of evidence, and his crusade against the gang wears away at their nerves until they're all ready to flee with what assets they can lay hands on quickly.

Wallace does an excellent job of misdirection, making us believe that Jack is any of several different people (one of whom does take on the persona at one point), only to reveal a completely unexpected identity at the end. There are armed confrontations, there's a kidnapping (of the main investigator's fiancée, who's also the daughter of a member of the gang who's trying to leave it and go straight), it's all strong stuff, and in Wallace's trademark pacy style. If he has a fault, it's that it's not always easy to tell who is talking in some of the extended dialog sequences; he could have done with adding a few more tags (in his books in general, not just this one).

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