The Fourth King

by Harry Stephen Keeler

The Thirteen Kings of Crooked Chicago Finance! That s what the terrorist calling himself THE STAR OF THE NIGHT called the thirteen richest moguls of Chicago when he sent them threatening letters which included decks of cards missing certain kings. Now it s up to technical draftsman Jason Folwell to solve a most perplexing mystery, and only Harry Stephen Keeler could have imagined the webwork machinations behind this most unusual tale involving the machinations of big business and the heartless men who rule the game.

100 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

Born in Chicago in 1890, Keeler spent his childhood exclusively in this city, which was so beloved by the author that a large number of his works took place in and around it. In many of his novels, Keeler refers to Chicago as "the London of the west." The expression is explained in the opening of Thieves' Nights (1929):

"Here ... were seemingly the same hawkers ... selling the same goods ... here too was the confusion, the babble of tongues of many lands, the restless, shoving throng containing faces and features of a thousand racial castes, and last but not least, here on Halsted and Maxwell streets, Chicago, were the same dirt, flying bits of torn paper, and confusion that graced the junction of Middlesex and Whitechapel High streets far across the globe."

Other locales for Keeler novels include New Orleans and New York. In his later works, Keeler's settings are often more generic settings such as Big River, or a city in which all buildings and streets are either nameless or fictional. Keeler is known to have visited London at least once, but his occasional depictions of British characters are consistently implausible.

Reviews

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

¡Cómo me entretiene Harry Stephen Keeler! Sus novelas de argumentos imprevisibles y desconcertantes nunca dejan indiferente. En ‘El cuarto rey’ (The Fourth King, 1929) nos encontramos a J. Hamilton Eaves, dedicado a las altas finanzas, venta de acciones y demás, que recibe inesperadamente un paquete con una baraja de cartas a la que le faltan tres reyes y una nota amenazante de alguien que se autodenomina “Estrella de la Noche”. Investigando tan misterioso asunto, Eaves no tarda en averiguar que ha habido más ejecutivos que han recibido otras tantas barajas de cartas. Pero Eaves tiene un plan. Es entonces cuando se ve involucrado uno de los empleados de Eaves, Jason Folwell, el verdadero protagonista de la novela. Como siempre en las tramas de Keeler, Jason no tardará en verse en un verdadero embrollo, del que deberá salir a contrarreloj.

Cada vez estoy más fascinado con este escritor y sus adictivas historias.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting narrative but pretty poorly written. Silly dialogue, flat characters, mildly sexist/racist/xenophobic. This reprinted edition (Ramble House) had a lot of spelling and punctuation errors. I felt like I was proofreading part of the time.