Late last year I read a couple of books collecting Lester Dent’s early pulp series heroes, Lynn Lash, Lee Nace and Foster Fade. As I found that useful for working on Savage Adventures I thought I’d read some more …
TERROR, INC.: The Weird Mysteries of Lester Dent is a collection of “menace” thrillers featuring various one-shot PIs tackling bizarre deaths — men turning into to skeletons, men bleeding to death through their pores, beheaded by a ray weapon and attacks by “The Invisible Horde” which uses an X-ray like beam to turn things and people transparent. Entertaining in their own right, and it’s easy to see elements Dent may have recycled into the Doc Savage series — invisibility in The Spook Legion, the skeleton death in Land of Fear, the beheading ray in The Headless Men (ghost-written by Alan Hathway).
In 1936, Dent stopped submitting (and presumably writing) Doc Savage stories for several months. Doc Savage expert Will Murray says there’s no clue to whether Dent wanted to take a break, hoped to walk away for good or what. During the sabbatical he submitted several detective stories to the critically acclaimed Black Mask magazine and also wrote GENIUS JONES. a screwball comedy that imagines Doc Savage a little differently.
The protagonist (who may have inspired a similar DC comics character a few years later) is the son of “Polar” Jones, an explorer who died in the Arctic leaving his son behind. With the help of the one surviving explorer and a ton of books, Jones educated himself in just about everything. However his lack of human contact gives him an almost Vulcan level of cluelessness about human behavior — and why does he get these strange feelings when he meets attractive women?
The plot involves a hardnosed millionaire who realizes Jones is that rarity, an honest man, and sets him a challenge: if he can find worthy recipients for a million dollars within one month, Jones will take charge of distributing the millionaire’s entire fortune. That’s very bad news for Lyman Lee, a scheming business associate (“Lyman Lee had gotten waiters fired for spilling soup on his jacket.”) who has his own plans for the money.
While the handsome, brawny, brilliant Jones has a lot in common with Doc Savage, the screwball take is completely different in tone. This one was thoroughly engaging; while the book includes the outline for a sequel, regrettably we never got one. It works better for me than the similarly humorous Gadget Man stories do.
#SFWApro. Top cover artist unknown; Genius Jones cover by Rudolph Belarski, all rights remain with current holder.
