BOOK REVIEW - "Sanders" by Edgar Wallace

I bought this book very cheap at a fair. As you can see, it does not even have its front cover any longer. It seems the imprint page has gone as well, so I don't know quite how old this version is but looking at the back cover and title page I'm going to guess it is 1940s. I gather it was written in the 1920s. I had read some of Edgar Wallace's crime novels and liked them very much. I had also heard of the Sanders of the River series of books, so thought this was probably worth 20p - or whatever I paid for it.

Gosh - what to say about this book?

It was written a hundred years ago and is very much of its time. It has all the prejudices, attitudes and views of the time - which are very different from the bigotries, attitudes and views of our own time.

The action is set in an unnamed British colony in West Africa. The main heroes are the three British officials who administer the part of the colony based around a river with its peoples, problems and crimes. The title hero is Commissioner Sanders - an incorruptible and upright civilian official who collects taxes, administers justice and deals with any intruding Europeans. He is assisted by two military officers who command the locally recruited regiment. Hamilton is a competent soldier, while his junior Tibbets is what would have been termed back then "a perfect ass". Again both are honest, upright and doing their best to do what is right for the peoples of the area they look after. To modern eyes their attitudes to the locals is extremely paternalistic to the point of racism - and their notions of dispensing justice might be politely described as being "rough and ready", involving as they do summary executions without trial.

On the other hand, the white folks in the books do not come out of it very well. The Africans might be engaged in murder, robbery and such but for pure downright cold blooded evil you have to turn to the white characters.

The author spent several years in Africa as a journalist. Among the things he covered were the horrific brutalities meted out in the Congo by the Belgians. The death toll is unclear but certainly ran into the millions. The Belgians were concerned only with profit and used their superior weaponry ruthlessly to trample over what we would today term human rights and cultural sensitivities. It is probably not too much of a stretch to see the fictional Commissioner Sanders as being the author's view of what a good colonial regime should be. I suppose he was portraying the British Empire to a British audience in the idealised form that the British audience wanted the British Empire to be. Whether it was or not is another question.

Anyway, if you can get past the attitudes and views of the author and the characters he creates, these are absolutely cracking adventure tales. well drawn characters, plot twists and turns in plenty and more action than you could reasonably expect to be packed into the number of pages.