Lester Dent (1904–1959)

Doc Savage legend Lester Dent created Lynn Lash and Foster Fade in the early 1930s, before he began writing Doc Savage and during his early days writing the stories which would make him immortal. All six stories are great pulpy fun as long as you like early pulp, Lester Dent, and don’t try to compare it to Doc Savage.

There are three stories each featuring two different weird-science detectives in this collection. Lynn Lash is a blending of those wild and wooly pulp adventures which involve a strange crime with old-fashioned detective work. He is known in these stories as the living Sherlock Holmes. The Lash stories are quite fun, but not as good as Dent would be in a couple of years when he created Foster Fade.

There are similarities between Dent's two creations. Both use gadgets and science to solve weird crimes which are baffling police. Both series have a Manhattan setting. Interestingly, Fade works as an investigator for a major paper in New York called - The Planet. It’s logo and lobby are marked by a huge globe. Call to mind anyone you know?

Well, the similarity ends there, but it’s fun to note. Fade is The Crime Spectacularist. He has a secretary at the paper named Dinamenta Stevens, a platinum blonde of the hard-boiled variety who ghostwrites all his adventures for the Planet. In the story, Hell in Boxes, she gives a little tart who got the better of her during the case what for, making it a pulpy delight.

This stuff is great fun and has a place in pulpdom history. It’s a shame Dent simply didn’t have time — and was possibly discouraged from doing so — to continue writing Foster Fade stories once Doc Savage became so huge. One of the Lynn Lash stories, The Flame Horror, was originally rejected and never published in Dent’s lifetime. It is speculated, however, that he slyly pushed it over to his pal, the legendary Norvell Page, who reworked it as a Spider story. Spider aficionados might get a sense of déjà vu when reading The Flame Horror for that reason. But it’s here in this collection as Dent’s original Lynn Lash story.

The LYNN LASH stories are as follows:

THE SINISTER RAY

THE MUMMY MURDERS

THE FLAME HORROR


The FOSTER FADE stories are as follows:

HELL IN BOXES

WHITE-HOT CORPSES

MURDER BY CIRCLES


Following the six early pulp stories is Dent’s outline for a Lynn Lash story, showing how he planned it out, which is interesting. And there is some interesting information about some of the early pulp magazines in the forward. Norvell Page and Lester Dent are two important figures in pulp, and it’s great to have Dent’s Lynn Lash and Foster Fade stories available to readers in some format. Depending on what you know about early pulp and this sub-genre, your mileage may vary on these stories, but if you have an appreciation for the origins of pulp, or Lester Dent — a.k.a. Kenneth Robeson — this one is worth picking up.… (mehr)

Jefferson City, Missouri is the unlikely setting for Lady in Peril, the final novel by prolific pulp author Lester Dent. (In fact, it was published in the same month that Dent died: March 1959.) A grocer turns up dead after testifying before the State Senate about price fixing; the death is ruled a suicide, but his sister believes that he was murdered. When she tries to uncover the truth, she falls into the clutches of the bad guys and it's up to her husband (who sits on the board of a local food co-op) to rescue her.

Sounds like a lame premise, but it works reasonably well; there's just enough characterization to make you give a damn about the people in the book and the things that are happening to them. And, while there's not much physical action, Dent has a good sense of storytelling momentum and even conjures a few moments of genuine suspense. (Fans of "Sail" and "Angelfish," the two rough-and-tumble Oscar Sail stories that Dent wrote for Black Mask in 1936, are bound to be disappointed since this novel bears little resemblance to them. If you haven't read those stories, you should: they represent his primary contribution to the field of hard-boiled crime fiction.)

Not exciting by any stretch of the imagination, but readable.… (mehr)

Book number two. Only 179 to go!

This one, to me, is the stereotypical Doc Savage adventure. A wild criminal device, dependent on something only found in a far off place. A mysterious villain. And lots of dumb criminal lackeys to throw at Doc and the gang to provide the action.

Along the way, this particular adventure also includes dinosaurs! pseudo-science! an obvious identity of the mysterious villain! Ham and Monk bantering! more pseudo-science (the atomic theories are hilarious)! lots of over-written scenes! and more exclamation marks than you can shake a stick at!

Of course (spoiler alert) Doc uses his big brawn and big brain to save everyone's asses in the end.

Fun stuff.… (mehr)