The other Doc Savage — or is it the other Lester Dent?

Working on my Doc Savage history, Savage Adventures, gave me an incentive to do something I’ve been itching to do for a while, read some of Lester Dent‘s other pulp crimefighters. Before leaving for Florida I bought the ebooks of HELL IN BOXES and THE WEIRD ADVENTURES OF THE BLOND ADDER, covering three gadget-wielding heroes Dent introduced in 1932, 1933 and 1934 (the later and much more successful Gadget Man will have to wait). They were fun to read and yes, definitely relevant to writing about Doc Savage. Let’s look at them chronologically.

Lynn Lash was the first and least interesting of the three men, though the stories are still entertaining. He’s one of those millionaires who dabble in crimefighting just because, a common thing in the Golden Age of Mystery. In the introduction, Doc Savage expert Will Murray says Dent probably modeled him on Craig Kennedy, Scientific Detective, a fictional criminologist who debuted in 1910. Kennedy’s adventures were hugely popular for a while but according to Thrilling Detective suffered from poor writing and that the cutting edge forensic science Kennedy wielded got old-fashioned fast.

Not a problem for Dent, who didn’t let scientific realities restrain him. Working out of his skyscraper lab (much like Doc), Lash deals with “The Sinister Ray” that induces blindness in victims; can Lash stop an unnamed Asian nation (presumably Japan) from using it to conquer America? In “The Mummy Murders,” the murder method withers its victims in minutes; in the unpublished (until this collection) “The Flame Horror” the villains deploy a superpowerful form of thermite that burns anything it touches.

Murray details how Lash appeared as pulps were rejecting Agatha Christie-style stories of detection in favor of “menace” yarns where heroes battled sinister villains whose constant threat overshadowed every page. I can see that in all the stories I’m discussing here, as well as a lot of Doc Savage (I’ll be blogging about that aspect in more detail later). Other elements the three heroes have in common are that they’re all extremely tall and there’s much more slang than in the typical Doc Savage yarn.

Despite the excitement and his gadgetry (such as a briefcase that contains a miniature gun), Lash is less interesting as a character than Ricky, his tomboyish secretary who speaks seven languages. 1933’s Lee Nace, AKA the Blond Adder, is much more entertaining and much more evocative of the Man of Bronze.Like Doc, Nace is a polymath, having completed both law school and medical school and written a chemistry textbook. He doesn’t carry a gun (like Doc he thinks it makes you dependent on the weapon) but does have an arsenal of gadgets including a bulletproof vest of his own design, a metal skullcap that looks like his own hair, and cufflinks holding tiny darts dipped in knockout drops. He also has the quirky details Doc’s men and many of the supporting cast do: a snakelike scar on his forehead (hence his name) and a habit of biting through the bakelite stem of his pipe under stress. He’s much more human than Doc, though. A shot to his bulletproof vest will knock him down and hurt like hell. There’s no antidote for his knockout darts so in one story he’s stuck waiting the full two hours until the men revive. In one story he gets into a brawl over a baseball game.

Nace’s menace stories involve a green skeleton apparently killing people, men turning up dead with their eyes popping out (a hook Dent would later reuse in The Annihilist) and in the final story an apparent meteorite containing a human skull and a diamond. My first thought was that it was a variation of the superheated gas the villains want control of in The Red Skull but after reading the unpublished Lash story “The Flame Horror” it feels more like Dent recycled that heat weapon. I suspect after Nace’s adventures ended (according to Murray, Dent simply couldn’t keep up with them on top of his Doc Savage duties) Dent also recycled the Blond Adder’s female cousin — a capable woman, she becomes Nace’s sidekick/apprentice — into Doc’s cousin Pat Savage. This makes me wonder again if Dent wanted Pat to join Doc’s team but the editors overruled him.

The Blond Adder’s stories are probably the strongest but Foster Fade, the Crime Spectacularist is the most interesting character. The publisher of the Planet, the world’s most sensationalistic and successful tabloid, has decided that since readers crave spectacular crime stories, he’ll hire an in-house investigator to solve bizarre, colorful murders (an Aroma Killer who murders with scents, a mysterious Something that turns people to brittle stone) in colorful style, with lots of Doc-style gadgetry. Platinum blonde reporter Dinametra Stevens then writes up the case; her style is too lurid for tasteful women’s-interest pieces but it’s perfect for this kind of blood and thunder. While “Din” is no fan of seeing dead bodies, she shows herself capable in a fight too.

I love that concept (I may steal it at some point) and how Dent develops it. Unlike Nace, Fade would love to pack a gun but the readers think it’s cooler if he doesn’t, so that’s out. And where Lash and Nace are admired by cops, the Planet has written way too many pieces comparing Fade to the bumbling cops; they can’t stand the Spectacularist.

Alas, we only got three Fade stories, possibly because of overwork again, or that the editor was tough to work for. If you’re a Doc Savage fan, both books are worth reading.

#SFWApro. Red Skull cover by James Bama, don’t know the artist on the other two. All rights remain with current holder.