• As would be expected of the author of this installment, James Reasoner, the story flows smoothly and quickly.
• Stylitically, the prose is transparent and unobtrusive -- it never impedes the flow of the story.
• Characterization: Traditional pulp characters were seldom more than stereotypes, sometimes with one or two distinctive idiosyncracies i.e. "Ham" Brook's swordcane and stylish dress, in Doc Savage. The characterization here goes a little beyond that -- characters are usually believable as personalities, and the main character is given some inner life.

• The one thing I can complain about (once I adjusted my expectations -- see "Errata" below) is that the structure of the chapters begins to get a bit repetitive: I started to notice that every chapter seemed to end on a cliffhanger, or a sudden revelation.
• One thing the old Hero pulps did was to create a sense of urgency, usually fostered by a sense of a higher purpose: Some dreadful evil that must be stopped as quickly as possible, before it comes to full fruition. As contrasted to this, until about two thirds of the way through the story, Gabriel Hunt doesn't really know what is at state: all that he knows is that a bunch of thugs are interested in getting the flag he's received (the McGuffin of the piece), and in impeding his investigation. Therefore, although this is an entertaining as an adventure, it does work as quite the thriller you would expect, given its characterization as a revival of "Hero Pulp".

• A sense of the grotesque: Most "Hero Pulps" had some kind of grotesque element -- all the better to lend themselves to vivid and lurid covers and illustrations. Sometimes, the grotesque was the hero, himself: e.g. The Avenger, with his dead white face. Sometimes it was the villians (most any of the adversaries of Secret Agent X or G-8). This novel has no such grotesqueries.
• An over-powering sense of urgency and pace: As noted earlier, the protagonists in "Hero Pulp" were usually working against some known, dire, threat to society as a whole, usually with either a known time element, or a villian whose threat to society as a whole steadily accellerated. Alternatively, some of the best pulp writers, like Lester Dent or Robert Hogan, had a knack for getting their heroes out of one bad stituation, into a worse situation, and from that to one even worse than the previous two, combined, so you had to keep turning the pages to find out how the hero was going to emerge unscathed. As contrasted to that, this novel has adventures occur in discrete phases: Attack at the museum, exposition, attack on the way to the airport, attack in Florida, more exposition, etc. Instead of one cohesive, flowing narrative, it seem more a series of discrete episodes, like an old-fashioned serial.
• Alienation: The best pulp heroes were usually alienated in some way: Doc Savage could never "fit in" with ordinary folks because of his appearance -- same for the Avenger. Characters who operated in the dark, such as the Shadow and Secret Agent X sacrificed personal lives and human relationships in their single-minded mission to fight crime. Gabriel Hunt, by contrast, is an accepted public figure, fully integrated within society.
• Omni-Competence: Most "Hero Pulp" protagonists were multi-talented: combining athleticism with skill in science, surgery, aviation, or a dozen areas. As contrasted to this, Gabriel Hunt, although intelligent, fully admits that he is not the scholar of the family, and turns to his brother Michael when he needs information

I have, I admit, been taking a bit of a hiatus.  I'm currently working on completing a Master's thesis, and that is taking the majority of my writing time.

That being said, I just read a really good one, which I have to pass along:  The Murder Monster, a Secret Agent X novel, written by Emile C. Tepperman.  (You can download it for free, with complete illustrations, by following this link).

The Premise:  You can read about the premise of the "Secret Agent X" series at the reviews you will find at this link.

The Story:  The story begins with a mass escape of hardened criminals, serving life sentances, from a penitentiary.  In most pulp novels, the hunt for the criminals would be the bulk of the story.  However, this is a Secret Agent X story -- the escape is only the opening salvo, because, in the second chapter, we are told that there is a gang of "Robot Killers", killers with identical faces and clothes, who move in a robotic fashion, who have been staging sensational robberies, often accompanied by cold-blooded murder, throughout Manhattan.  Secret Agent X is on the case, getting information from various agents he has planted in likely places, the two detective agencies he has on his payroll, and sometimes going undercover himself.  He quickly determines that four close friends, young layabouts from well-to-do families, seem to be special targets for assasination from these killers.  The situation becomes even worse when it turns out the the robot killers are being led by a mysterious, masked, figure who can burn people to death with an unquenchable flame, merely by pointing his finger at them.  The agent's investigation leads him into a series of escalating conflicts, and narrow escapes from, these malefactors, until he eventually begins puts enough of the pieces of the puzzle together to risk his life confronting the killers directly.

To the Good:

• As with all of the Secret Agent X novels I've read to date, this one has tremendous pace -- its hard to stop turning the pages, once started.
• Its a clever story, with a denoument which took me by surprise -- for once, I didn't guess who the villian was, or the exact nature of his gimmick(s), until close to the very end.
• Unlike Doc Savage and some of the other heroes published by Street and Smith, the agent is not above taking life, when warranted to save himself or innocent onlookers.

To the Bad:

• There isn't quite the same tight focus on Secret Agent X as in some of the earlier novels.
• We also don't get much of the protagonist's interiority -- how the things which Agent sees and does affect him emotionally.  There isn't, in short, quite the same viscerality as the earlier ones.
• Most of the story, Secret Agent X is in a reactive position, responding to the actions of the villian.  It is only in the final third or fourth of the story that he begins to take positive action.

Evaluation:  A number of the differences I have observed may, perhaps, be related to the difference in authorship.  The earlier novels were written by Paul Chadwick, who, although writing in the third person, kept the focus entirely on the protagonist for the entire story, even venturing into the protagonists thoughts and feelings, where appropriate.  Emile Tepperman, however, uses a more diffuse focus: he will, sometimes, narrate events that Secret Agent X doesn't know about.  This has a mixed result:  it improves the level of suspense since the reader often knows more about the protagonist -- that the Agent is about to unwittingly enter a trap, for instance.  However, it also sacrifices something of the intensity of the Chadwick novels, where the reader is, effectively, placed in the same situation as the protagonist, trying to figure out the situation as it comes along.  Although I enjoyed this story, I think I enjoyed the earlier ones by Paul Chadwick more.

Assessment:  Recommended -- an entertaining, fast-paced story.

Caveat:  if you haven't read any of these stories before, I would recommend starting with some of the earlier onces by Paul Chadwick.  That being said, there is a reason why Emile C. Tepperman was respected by the community of pulp writers in the 30s and 40s -- although he never ascended to the heights of figures such as Lester Dent (Doc Savage's primary author) or Walter Gibson (the Shadow's chronicler), he was high in the second eschelon of pulp writers, for his mastery of story-telling dynamics, such as in the stories you can find here. 

So, lets start off with the first one I promised, The Trojan Hearse, by Hugh Prather.

Shell Scott: Standing 6'2", an ex-marine, with white brows and hair worn in a buzz haircut, Shell Scott is a solo private investigator, who lives in Hollywood and has an office in downtown Los Angeles. Although a tough and effective private investigator, capable of dishing it out as well as taking it, he has nothing of the brooding reflectiveness of the typical hard-boiled private eye: he comes across as an essentially happy-go-lucky, well-adjusted, and motivated primarily by the pursuit of the next big paycheck and/or good time. If you were to ask him about his existential angst, he'd probably assume that was the name of some high-falutin' cocktail, and ask to try one. Not a profound thinker, nor given to introspection, but often belies greater awareness and observation than you would expect, given his manner.
 

Oh .... and he has quite an eye for the babes!

The Series: The Shell Scott series ran from 1950 to 1987, through 35 novels. They were tremendously popular in their time, selling up to 50 million, and Shell Scott was probably second only to Mike Hammer in the Private Eye genre.
 

The story begins with a curious prelude, which establishes that Johnny Trojan, a popular singer, has died, and, subsequently, when something came out about him, his grave was violated by outraged fans, and that Shell Scott is the responsible party. Also, somehow, this also had the effect of him being soundly condemned by various highly positioned figures, and meeting the newly elected president during the election of 1968.
 

This prelude is odd in a couple ways ... first, it gives away things that most authors would save for their climax, in the very first page. And, second, it means that this story is technically science fiction, since it was written in 1964.

The story itself begins with Shell Scott being approached by the sister of a constant friend and companion of the eponymous Johnny Trojan. This companion had an unusually close friendship with Trojan: they lived in neighboring apartments, and were always seen together, and Johnny Trojan could only record, or sing in public, if this companion were near to hand. (Refreshingly, though, there is no imputation of a homosexual relationship -- put it down to the relative naivite of the early 60s, a time when it didn't occur to the majority of people, that Libarace was gay!) This companion has recently died, falling off the balcony of his apartment, and his sisterdoesn't agree with the coroner's ruling that it was suicide. Her brother had seemed happy and content when she last saw him, and, besides, he had gone through therapy with a highly regarded psychotherapist, currently fashionable on the Hollywood scene. Shell agrees to make some inquiries.

This leads him to interview the therapist (which interview becomes a scathing satire of then popular Freudian therapy). The interview doesn't seem to reveal anything really useful .... but, upon leaving the therapists office, Scott narrowly survives an attack from known mafia henchmen, leading him to suspect that there is something seriously amiss. He proceeds to interview Johnny Trojan's agent (the agent, implausibly, represents not only singers, but writers, artists, and pundits as well -- leading to further pointed satire of each of these). Subsequent interviews with Johnny Trojan himself, along with some of the agents clients provides even more grist for Prather's satire, as Johnny Trojan is the only person who seems seriously saddened by his friends passing, while a literary novelist, pundit, and an artist (all clients of the same agent), attending an informal memorial party, show themselves up for being critnous, self-obsessed gloryhounds.

Eventually, when Scott makes a discovery of a key clue, whose significance he doesn't immediately realize, he finds himself accused of a crime he didn't commit, and has to try to solve the mystery of the deaths of both the companion and the subsequent death of Johnny Trojan. This leads to the discovery of corruption which extends not only into the major media, but may also have a huge influence on the current presidential election (which is intermittedly described in the background of the story).

I don't think its any spoiler to say that Scott eventually proves his innocence. More to the point, he stages a couple hilarious stunts in the process -- and if I were to describe these stunts, it would be a spoiler indeed! In context, they made a curious kind of sense, but had me chuckling, at the same time.

Positives:
 

• Characters are strictly two-dimensional, including the protagonist, but they are vivid two-dimensional caricatures, and the writing is lively and has a sufficiently quick pace to overcome this.
• Humor and satire -- although written in a straight-faced manner, the satire of various pretentious types of nabobs and movements (many of which still exist, or have current-day analogs) adds considerably to the enjoyablity of this yarn.
• Effective, clearly described action sequences
• The author inserts some political philosophy and artistic criticism, in a manner such that it is, mostly, organic to the story.

• Right-wing politics: this might be belying my own bias -- I make no bones about the fact that I am in the left-wing, politically, so some of the right-wing shibboleths the writer presents sometimes annoyed me a little.
• Sexism: Women are portrayed in a manner that correlates to the traditional virgin/whore dualism, such that only the one virginal woman is treated as a true personality, and the one sexually available woman is portrayed as a dumb bimbo.

Evaluation: The story moves at a fast, engaging pace. The author manages changes of pace, between satire, action, political/artistic ruminations, and one effectively heart-wrenching scene when an appealing character meets a dire fate. The politics are right-wing -- but, the interesting thing is that its the right-wing as its existed in the 60s -- which is to say that there is no identification with the religious right (thank goodness! Wouldn't want Shell to have to forego his womanizing ways!), and a viewpoint that advocates for small government, minimal interference with peoples daily lives, low taxes even for the wealthy, but acknowledges a need for government help to those who are truly needy. The political viewpoint expressed would now actually be considered left-wing, ironically enough, if shading somewhat to the right. This makes the story somewhat dated, but in an interesting way, insofar as it demonstrates how the political axis has shifted in the subsequent decades

Assessment: Recommended! The tremendous pace swept me into the story, the satire gave me more than a few chuckles, and the political and artistic observations gave me food for thought. I'm going to pick up some more Shell Scotts, I think, next time I'm looking for a light-hearted romp.


If you want to find out more about this character, this book or this series, you might want to check out the follwoing links:

Links:

Another review of this same novel

A website where you can purchase this novel.

Thrilling Detective website has a profile of Shell Scott

A Question:

Is anyone reading this a fan of Shell Scott? If so, what novel would you recommend I check out next?

And does anyone know of any other private eye series that has a similar combination of humor and action?

 

• First and foremost, this story has tremendous pace ... just when you think you know where it's going, there is a hint of some puzzlement or mystery, a sudden development, or change of pace -- its hard to put down.
• Characterization:  The characters aren't terribly profound, but they are *vivid*.  The author manages to capture the appearance and personality of the major characters in just a few paragraphs -- and effectively enough that I didn't need to backtrack every so often to be reminded of who a character was, when they reappeared, sometimes several chapters later.
• There are a number of effective action sequences which are told in an engaging and clear manner, such that you always know what is going on -- a more difficult feat for a writer to accomplish than most readers appreciate.

• The one thing I can fault  this novel for is that it changes pace a little more frequently than I'd prefer:  In the first two or three chapters, the author sets up a situation which most authors would be content to then play out throughout the course of an entire novel.  Then there is a surprising developement, creating another situation, which other authors have devoted entire novels to.  And then there is another development .... etc.  Although this has the advantage of making for continual surprises, it also mitigates the focus and cohesion of the story as a whole -- after the first  two or three such  twists, just about the time I thought the author had finally settled on what the story was about, there was yet another twist or surprise development.

• Humor:  First and foremost, he addresses most everyone and every situation with a certain wry detachement ... expressing a somewhat fatalistic gallows humor, and often making dry, sardonic statements to other characters, which the other characters don't usually get, but whose humor is apparent to a careful reader
• A Man with a Code:  Edge has a fairly simple, but consistant and coherent code:  He is helpful and appreciative to others who are helpful to him, but, as he observes, when questioned about some of his actions "The way I see it, if anybody crosses me, he puts himself in the firing line.  And so it could be he'll just wind up dead before his allotted span". (pg 130).
• Philosophy:  There actually is a little bit of subtext:  Edge comes across as being somewhere between a fatalist, an existentialist, a stoic, or a nihilist.  As he observes at one point, "Life's just one goddamn thing after another.  Then you die.  Where chance takes a hand in it is whether your number comes up sooner or later".  (pg. 187).  Admittedly, this isn't a complexly formulated or articulated philosophy -- but it is there, which I appreciate.  It influences his attitude to the people, and predicaments he encounters. Moreover, given this outlook, you can make the case that the episodic nature of the plot is entirely consistant with this worldview.

The Story: A railroad construction company has won the bid on a project to build a tunnel going through a mountain in former Indian territory, in Idaho. However, a local Indian elder starts warning that the mountain is the home of his tribes rain god, and states that. Shortly after, a local prosepector, and two of the contruction crews surveyers, are found dead in proximity to the workings -- struck dead by lightening, by all appearances. A pillar of green mist has appeared, each of these times. One of the owners of the construction company is a friend of Benson, and call upon Justice Inc. to investigate. And then things get really complcated.

This story was written by Paul Ernst, and, as is typical with most of Ernst's novels, it has terrific pace: one complication follows quickly upon another. He also does a good job of making sure that each of the Avenger's associates gets an opportunity to shine, moving the plot forward with their investigations, discoveries, captures and escapes. As is typical, the story often develops into two or three separate strands, following either the Avenger or one of their aids, and often ending chapters with one or another character in peril.

• Positives:
  • Although the story is told mostly in straightforward third person, there is an interesting point of characterization, when the Avenger chooses to pursue an avenue of inquiry which is clearly meant as a trap: the narrative voice becomes omniscient long enough to inform us that the Avenger has made a conscious decision to purposely enter traps because
    • he is fully accepted that his fight against crime is going to, sooner or later, result in his death. If he dies in one of these traps, it will be in the pursuit of the mission to which he is dedicated, and will, moreover, return him to his murdered wife and daughter in the afterlife. In effect, then, the Avenger is characterized as an existentialist, decades before existentialist thought was popularized in the US.
    • Moreover, he figures that if he does extricate himself from a trap, he will, almost inevitably, learn something valuable and useful about his opponent.
  • I appreciate how the Avenger's team includes both a woman, Nellie, and a black man, Josh, who are treated as entire equals in the team
  • There is a seen where one of the Avenger's aids is attacked by the "lightning god", and actually dies from the bolt of lightning. He is revived via the Avenger quickly engineering a devise, with the equipment in hand, to shock his heart back into action -- the description of the device seems reasonably plausible, to my understanding. Moreover, in a rather daring move for the 1940s, when this aid is revived, he states that all he remembers from his brief period being dead is .... nothing. This would have been rather risky, given the common religiousity of the period. It is also, again, somewhat existentialist, insofar as it suggest, then, that what matters is the choices we make, and what we choose to stand for in this life ... not some hoped for reward in the next.
  • We are informed that, although the Avenger himself is committed to never taking a life, his aids feel no such compunction, and will kill, if necessary, in self defense.
  • Fair play: we are actually given clues, in the course of the story, as to how the attacks are being committed and why ... but they are carefully disguised. One telling point completely escaped me, until its relevance was revealed at the end of the story.
  • Hung by their own petard: Once again, the Avenger cleverly engineers things such that, having given his opponents due warning, they end up dooming themselves by their own greed and arrogance.
  • Prose: this was actually an improvement on some of the other Avengers stories I've read -- although the prose style was nothing amazing, neither were there any awkward sentences that got in the way of the flow of the story.
• Negative: Weeeeell ... with the possible exception of the Avenger and Nellie Gray, all of the characters, although vivid, are pretty two dimensional. Overall, though, the narrative moment is so effective that I never felt myself fretting over that.

A few reviews back, I stated I was going to next review Gunsmith #300, The Long Arm of the Law -- and I do plan to get to that shortly.  This volume is of particular interest because, so far as I know, its the one crossover of all three of the lead characters who are currently being published in this genre:  The Gunsmith, Slocum, and Longarm.

That being said, I've already read some books in the previous two series, but I had never read a Longarm book, and I thought it might be interesting to try one out, before setting out to evaluate the crossover.

Why this one?  I was at my local library doing some research, and, having found some books on my topic, I ambled by the popular paperback.  I admit that the cover caught my eye ... the image of a tell, auburned haired, gun-toting lass is likely to do that.

Then I read the first few lines:

When a man is fixing to hang come Monday morning, he doesn't sleep too soundly on Saturday night. So the Fargo Kid became aware of the fuss out front before it made its way back to the cell block of the Pueblo County Jail to find him wide awake and upright with his hands on the bars of this cage

The Fargo Kid would never see thirty again, but he hadn't grown worth a mention since he'd killed a Wells Fargo shotgun messenger out California way, at the age of seventeen So he still struck some at first glance as a runty juvenile delinquent who'd led a hard life. Standing five foot two in his high-heeled Justins, he had to stare soberly up at what seemed a gigantic woman or a might big sissy in a dark velvet riding habit with a perky veiled derby pinned atop upswept auburn hair. The voice sounded she-male enough as she gestured with the eighteen inches of bloody blade in one hand and the ring of keys in her other to ask the prisoner,soberly, "What would you do to get out of here, young sir?"

To which the Fargo Kid could only reply, "You name it, and if it's humanly possible, you got it, ma'am."

• Stong opening chapters, which clearly delineate the chief characters, their appearance, psychology and motivations
  
• Longarm actually develops to being a very appealing character, wonderfully decent to deserving souls:
  • helping out a widow who has gotten in trouble with the state bureaucracy because, not being fluent in English, she didn't understand the paperwork sent to her on her husband's death
  • being compassionate to a "soiled dove" who has been set up to take a potentially deadly fall by a man whom she believed truly cared to her

• In spite of the promising beginning, and the suspense promised by the opening premise, the narrative drive is utterly squandered. This is brought about in three ways:
  
  
  
  1. Neither of the villians is portrayed doing much that is very effective nor directly threatening to their prey
     
  2. Longarm basically spends most of the story wandering from one self-contained episode to another, which have no direct bearing on the main plot.
     
  3. Too much sex: Don't get me wrong: I'm not a prude. I quite enjoy sex. A good rousing description of a sexual interlude can be quite entertaining -- especially if it in some way advances the plot and/or delineates character. However, after the opening four or five chapters, it seems like the sexual interludes are being forced into the narrative not as an organic outgrowth of the situation, but because of some formulaic requirement to have *some* kind of sexual interlude every two to three chapters. Result?: any momentum developed by those earlier chapters is quickly lost.
  
  
• Mild Spoiler: The ending is arbitrary: it seems as if the author suddenly realized he had gotten up to the requisite page count, and hastened to bring things to an end. Moreover, the protagonist, the person we are supposed to be rooting for, ultimately is, at best, an onlooker at the resolution, instead of the *bringer* of resolution, as you would expect from what it, otherwise, an accessible, appealing, and heroic character.
  
  Assessment
  I actually have to split this, thus:
  
  Assessment for this individual book: NOT Recommended. Negatives far out weigh positives. The suspense and thrills promised by the opening sadly ebbs away, eroded by unrelated episodes.
  
  Assessment for the series?: Passable. The Longarm character, as portrayed in this novel is interesting and appealling. Although I was dissatisfied with this particular novel, I'm inclined to give the series one or two more shots, to see if others in the series combine the characterization in this volume with good *storytelling* and *pace*.
  
  REQUEST: Are you a reader of this series? If so, are their any volumes you can recommend that have a good narrative drive? Or is this particular volume fairly typical for the series?

"Steve," went on Shifty, waxing eloquent, "I appeals to your national pride! Here's the Kid, an American like yourself, pent up in durance vile, and for no more reason than for takin' up for his own country -- "

"Huh!" I perked up my ear. "How's that?"

"Well, he blows into a pub where three British sailors makes slanderous remarks about American ships and seamen. Well, you know the Kid -- just a big, free-hearted, impulsive boy and terrible proud of his country, like a man should be. He ain't no sailor, of course, but them remarks was an insult to his countrymen and he wades in. He gives them limeys a proper drubbin' but here comes a host of cops which hauls him before the local magistrate which hands him a fine we can't pay.

"Think, Steve!" orated Shifty."There's the Kid, with thousands of admirin' fans back in the States wastin' his young manhood in a stone dungeon, bein' fed on bread and water and maybe beat up by the jailers, merely for standin' up for his own flag and nation. For defendin' the honor of American sailors, mind you, of which you is one. I'm askin' you, Steve, be you goin' to stand by and let a feller countryman languish in the 'thrallin' chains of British tyranny?"

"Not by a long ways!" said I, all my patriotism roused and roaring. "Let bygones be bygones!" I said.

It's a kind of unwritten law among sailors ashore that they should stand by their own kind. A kind of waterfront law, I might say.

There was quite a number of thugs there from the Nagpur -- Brent's present ship -- and they all rose as one and gimme the razz. Sailors is funny. I know that Brent hazed the liver out them, yet they was rooting for him like he was their brother or something.

I made no reply to their jeers, maintaining a dignified and aloof silence only except to tell them I was going to tear their pet mate apart and strew the fragments to the four winds

1. These are published in paperback format, instead of magazines


2. They are, perhaps, slightly longer than their pulp predecessors


3. They feature, at minimum, two sex scenes, in the course of the story (I'll get back to that, shortly).

• With but two exceptions (which I will get to, momentarily) this novel has really good pace ... the author gets the story moving pretty quickly, and for the first five or six chapters, manages to build up to various revelations and twists, that put the foregoing into a new context.
• The characters are well defined, and most have an interesting blend of strength and weaknesses, vices and virtues.
• The author conveys much of the characterization by what characters do, what they say, and how they say it, in about that order.

1. Secret Agent X's companion, Betsy Dale, gets kidnapped once *again*! I wish they would stop using that -- its getting a tad repetitive!


2. I was not entirely convinced that a band of hardened criminals would be willing to be, effectively, imprisoned by another criminal, merely for the sake of a promised reward. If they were living in elegence, given fine food and women, to keep them distracted when they weren't working on a job, I might be more convinced -- but living, celebately, in a barracks, having to eat in a mess hall? -- it strained credulity to credit that criminals, not known for having mastered the deferral of gratification, would put up with that in return merely for a promise of eventual rewards!

The Man who Evolved

Evaluation

The Devil's Asteroid

Evaluation

Request

• King Solomon's Throne
• Fountain of Youth -- a man who claims to never need sleep meets a man who claims to have never-ending youth. Who is scamming whom?
• Satan's Wool Merchant
• Lantern in the Sky -- two strangers meet, both of whom claim to be reincarnations of great poets of the past.
• The Kite Flier -- two self-proclaimed philosophers meet. One decides to put his ideas to a -- potentially deadly -- test.
• The Deadly Slowpoke -- a master hypnotist encounters a feared gunman -- but who, really, has the advantage on whom?
• The Three Fates -- three eccentric archaeologists come to town, each one of which claims a distinctive gift: the ability, respectively, to know what's what, who's who, and where's where.

• The Dancing Trees -- Lee Winters has a run-in with Orpheus and Euridice -- I kid you not!
• The Salt Wagons -- Winters somehow finds himself present at a confrontation between ancient Greeks and Persian, some time before the Persian war
• The Water Carriers -- Another confrontation with Greek mythology, but the names and roles are curiously skewed

• In the last quarter or so of the story, the detective hero falls in love with a woman whom he encounters.  The emotional engagement is vital to the ultimate resolution of the story but it seems a little forced:  I didn't quite find it credible that these characters, as described, would be so deeply enmeshed, so quickly.  And, no finding this vital development convincing, compromised my suspension of disbelief for the remainder of the story.
• Although the author otherwise exhibits much good writing -- pacing, dialogue -- his descriptive passages are fairly generic -- there is nothing like the colorful trenchant observations that one finds in the writing of Raymond Chandler
• The motif of the "two unrelated cases which turn out to be linked" was, actually, rather trite even when Chandler wrote "Farewell, my Lovely".

• Racism:  Various characters make explicit racist comments in the course of the story -- one character refers to one of the protagonist's employees as a "spick", for instance, to which Darling strongly objects.  Similarly, Darling is keenly aware that a new secretary, who is African American, probably has experienced rejection from other potential employers because of her race.  This casual racism is surprising for a modern reader:  although, unfortunately, racism still exists, airing of such views publicly is no longer acceptable.  Although we still have a ways to go, a story like this serves to remind one of how far we have come!  However, although this reflects a social milieu of its era, it is a further point in favor of this author that his protagonist does not himself espouse such views, and stand up to people who do.
  
• Telephones:  Its interesting how, at various plot points, characters have to seek out a phone in order to contact other people -- it reminds one of how cell phones have come to be taken for granted.
• Television:  When Darling notices a particular actress whom he has been looking for on a television program, he just assumes that its a live broadcast, and goes to the TV station to question her.  Its interesting to thus be reminded that, although, in this era, televisions were becoming increasingly common, the majority of broadcasts were still being done live.

• The author knows how to tell an engaging story, with plenty of narrative momentum
• He creates memorable characters, with vivid and credible psychology and motivation
• The dialogue more than makes up for the rather pallid description, by giving you a clear idea of who these people are.

• There are two passages where Jimmy Christopher passes the time by either show, or explaining, card tricks to friends. These, fortunately brief, passages grind the story to a halt, and seem to serve no real narrative function.


• Once again, we find an author relying upon "mystical powers of hypnotism" at a key point, to explain developments -- demonstrating that in the 30s, people had no conception of the limitations of hypnotism.


• Again, there is the dependence upon the "Yellow Peril" element -- a common theme in a number of pulps of the period. I consider this rather racist -- but it was a matter of common belief in the period, I suppose.


• The implicit idea that the United States is essentially Christian, and that, thus, any religion that would have the gall to try to supplant Christianity would result in the decline of the nation -- implicitly suggesting that if you are not a Christian, then you are not *patriotic*. That being said, isn't it interesting that the current administration sometimes seems to have just this kind of tacit belief? As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same!

• A new character has been introduced:  Thaddeus Penny is a blind man who makes a modest living by peddling gum and other odd items.  Content and serene in his humble existence, his modest position, however, gives him the opportunity to assist the Agent by picking up on conversations when people have their guard down, because of their tendency to ignore him.  He appears in two scenes in this novel, and was a refreshing and intriguing character to me:  it is so rare in media today that an utterly non-materialistic person would be portrayed so sympathetically.  However, as the Agent himself lives in a very modest fashion -- in spite of the unlimited wealth provided by his backers, it makes sense that there would be a bond of sympathy between them.  Thaddeus seems to be the only one in the series who can instantly recognize the agent when he encounters him, because of his extraordinary sensitivity to sound, including the distinctive sound of a given individual's walk.
• There is, once again, a mention of the Agent's wound -- the tacit implication being that he has set out to pursue this lone quest in order to make the most of a presumably limited span.
• The agent's previous scruples about taking life seem to have vanished:  In one confrontation, he shoots first, and only later confirms that his shots weren't fatal.  When he does finally confront the chief villians of the story, he has no hesitancy about shooting one of them.

• The story has almost as driving a pace as the earlier ones.
  
• There is a clever twist at the end, which surprised me.
• The new character of Thaddeus Penny is quite appealling
• There are some patches of actually pretty good writing.  Here is one example
• "Twilight was the hour that Betty Dale love best.  It spread a lavender mantle across the bare branches of the trees outside her apartment window.  It softened the outlines of the other buildings on the opposite site of the streat, made the whole city seem magical, enchanted, like a setting for an Arabian Nights play.  Twilight always made Betty Dale feel alive, vital, tender, no matter how hard a day she had (at work)."
• -- This is actually a night little word picture, conjuring a scene, and giving us a little insight into the inner life of one of the characters other than the Agent.

• Betty Dale gets kidnapped yet *again*.  This has happened in every one of these so far!  I hope that they come up with more for her to do in some of the other volumes in the series!
• I was disappointed when the agents policy against taking life was violated, without a comment -- this is such a breach from the other stories that I have to wonder if it was written by the same author.

 Another Secret Agent X novel, published a year after "The Torture Trust", and there have been some changes in the underlying premise:

(Revised) Premise: Although still mostly operating alone, the Agent now has not only help from the reporter, Betty Dale, but also from two different private detective agencies. Also, the X shaped scar over his heart, which could be the death of him, seems either to have been cured, or forgotten.

The Story:  As with "The Torture Trust", this story begins in media res -- always a fine way for a story to begin, to my way of thinking!  Special  police radio squad cars are on constant patrol.  The police who man these cars know that if they get a called, that it will likely mean their death -- and yet they are duty-bound to answer the call!

What is this threat?  Its actually a twofer:  First, a gang who care nothing about taking lives has been carrying on a campaign of robberies.  -- What's even worse than their deadly attacks, though -- all of the crooks look to be criminals who have already been captured, tried, .... and put to death!  The other threat is a specially modified roadster which always appears near the scene of these heists, driving down police and passersby indiscriminately, and also, apparently, driven by executed criminals.  (At one point, the driver sustains a shots to the head, and continues driving, anyway!)

Has some demented genius succeeded in bringing the dead back to life?  Who is behind it all, and how can they be stopped?

Agent X assumes his usual array of disguises in pursuit of the malefactors.

Points of Note: 

• Twice, in the course of the story,   the Agent is captured.  Yet, I didn't feel cheated by this repetition, as I did with the last "Phantom Detective" yarn I reviewed:  each time he is captured, it occurs whilst he is knowingly taking just such a risk, in order to pursue his aims -- he doesn't unwittingly blunder into being captured.  Moreover, he manages to escape by dint of his own resourcfullness, plus various ingenious gadgets he keeps on his person for just this eventuality.
• The agent has acquired on on-going nemesis, "The Leopard Lady", Felice Vincart -- a former vaudeville entertainer (her act involved trained leopards, natch!), who had married into money to find a lack of acceptance by upper-crust society.  In rebellion against them, and in pursuit of thrills, she appears to be assisting the mastermind behind this plot .... but, the mastermind always appears in a robe and hood (maybe left over from the members of the Torture Trust, in the earlier story?) -- and she and the mastermind never *do* seem to be seen at the same time.  Hmmnnnnnmmm ....
• There is an interesting plot twist at the end, when the mastermind is revealed (don't worry -- its not what you think it is!) which took me by surprise.  It was done effectively, set up in an early chapter with some misdirection that pulled the wool over *my* eyes, and probably will, your as well!
  
• For once, the Agent has a worthy adversary -- the mastermind is also a master of disguise (although his disguise techniques are different from the Agent's) and fights the Agent using the Agent's own methods.
• If that wasn't enough, the stakes are further stoked because, the first time the agent is abducted, his adversary takes his fingerprints and, removing the agents makeup, creates a life-mask of the agent.  (So far, I think this villian is the first person to see the true features of the agent!)  So the agent must not only seek to stop the deadly plot -- he must also figure out how to obtain the copies of his prints, and the life-mask, or risk having his mission compromised.

Assessment:  A riveting story, good suspense and narrative drive, a clever mystery, and an actually really effective twist ending .... highly recommended!

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