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. 

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!

• 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!

To purchase, click on the image -- it is directly hyper-linked to the publisher's website where you can order a copy for yourself