Edgar Wallace's thrillers usually tended to be tricky with a lot of confusing details, the intrigues were generally overburdened with both active people and amassed complications, and this is no exception, but it is as well written and contrived as any thriller by Hitchcock, as "The Foreign Correspondent" is bound to enter the mind. This is a pre-war thriller, but the war is more than impending, and the author impressingly anticipates the dangers ahead. Nothing is mentioned about Germany, not even the beginning of the film in a foreign prison reveals anything of any foreign nation, but instead the thriller is altogether thoroughly British and couldn't be more so. Edgar Wallace was a Fleet Street man, and there is a lot of journalism here, and every time he includes his expertise in that field, the matter beomes interesting and successful. All the actors here are forgotten today, except possibly Francis L. Sullivan, well known from many later classics, but they all act well enough and especially Anna Lee as the journalist getting mixed up in the intriguing mess but actually helping it to get through in the end. It is great entertainment, great action, constantly on a tremendous move, and the suspense of the intrigue prevents it from becoming disturbing for its superficiality, which usually is a trait in Edgar Wallace's more than prolific output. So it is a fascinating study in the awareness in certain circles of what was ahead in the immediate coming decade.
Review of The Secret Four
