Laurence Donovan's Hero Pulps: Doc Savage

Some days back I reviewed Twice Murdered, the new collection of Laurence Donovan detective stories from Black Dog Books. To read that review, click HERE, and to read or download a Donovan detective story called "Killer Tells All" click HERE.

As mentioned, while Donovan authored over 50 hero pulp novels and 400 other stories, Twice Murdered is the first book to bear his name. But a good number of his hero pulp adventures have been reprinted under house names, including all nine of his Doc Savage novels. Here they are. For the Almanack's review of Cold Death, click HERE.

And here, once again, is quite probably the best Donovan book of all - Twice Murdered. Donovan's hero pulp work was fine, but the stories under his own name (or in some cases his own pen names) display more of his wit, humor and personality. Check it out at BLACK DOG BOOKS.

"Killer Tells All" - a complete story by Laurence Donovan

From the author of the new Black Dog collection Twice Murdered, we're pleased to present this fine tale from Speed Detective of August 1943. Ex-detective Harrigan is now editing a "true crime" magazine, and - to his surprise - actually encounters a TRUE crime.

You many click on each page to enlarge and read here, or download the story as either a Word or Works document:  KILLER TELLS ALL (Word) or KILLER TELLS ALL (Works)

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For twelve more well-told tales of detectives, dames and murder, Davy and I suggest you pick up a copy of Twice Murdered (reviewed HERE) from BLACK DOG BOOKS!

Forgotten Books: "Cold Death" - a Doc Savage novel by Laurence Donovan

After reading Twice Murdered, the new Laurence Donovan story collection from Black Dog Books (reviewed yesterday), I wanted to try more Donovan. So I pulled this old Doc Savage pb off the shelf.

When I was first reading Doc Savage stories, I had no idea who Kenneth Robeson was. All I knew was I liked his style, and it kept me coming back for more. Nowadays, with Lester Dent highly acclaimed as the author of most of the Doc novels, it's become fashionable to look askance at the stories known to be the work of other hands.

One of those hands was Laurence Donovan.  He was called in for when Street & Smith planned to capitalize on the magazine’s success by putting out (like the Shadow) twice a month. Fast as Dent was, he wasn’t that fast, and Donovan got the nod to take up the slack.

In all, Donovan penned nine Doc adventures, and it’s been said he was the only Doc author whom Dent did not edit or rewrite.

Cold Death is the first Donovan Doc I’ve read with the knowledge it was he - not Dent - writing, so I was on alert to see what made it different. On the whole, the answer was not much. Donovan does a fine job of emulating Dent’s style, and turns out a typically action-packed adventure.

That said, I did notice a few differences between Dent and Donovan.

First, the violence was a tad more real. Sure, lots of folks suffer horrible deaths in the Dent novels, but there’s normally an element so weird or fantastic that it seems like the stuff of comic books. In Cold Death, one innocent bystander is sliced in half by a ray of Cold Light. Another guy is dismembered. Late in the story, one of Doc’s employees - a mechanic in his private hanger - takes a bellyful of slugs from a machine gun. His passing goes unmentioned and unmoored. The Doc Savage I know would most likely have prevented this, but if that proved impossible, he would have at least been affected by it. Donovan’s Doc is apparently more hardboiled.

This sort of violence, of course, is tame for the pulps in general. If this were an adventure of the Spider, hundreds would die in far more grisly fashion. And if our hero was Operator 5, the death toll would be in the thousands. But in the Doc Savage universe, we expect our violence to be somewhat more benign.  .

Then there’s the matter of rescues. This is normally Doc’s domain. Experts could probably point out instances where Dent’s Doc is saved from certain death by chance or by the actions of his aids, but I doubt a story could be found where this occurs three times. In the first instance, Doc awakes from unconsciousness to find himself strapped to the floor of an airplane - a plane without a pilot that is about to crash into the sea. As the chapter ends on this cliffhanger, I’m thinking Zow! How’s Doc going to get out of this one? Well, it turns out he can’t. Luckily, there’s a stowaway on board, a guy who tagged along just to save Doc’s bacon.

Later, Doc and Renny are about to zapped by highly-charged electric plates concealed beneath a rug. Enter Monk, who - without a clue why he’s doing it - activates a newly developed gizmo that just happens to save the day.  And at the climactic battle with the evil mastermind’s henchmen, Doc, Monk and Renny are about to riddled with bullets when Long Tom and Ham appear unexpectedly - in manacles, no less - to wreak havoc on the bad guys.

I’m not complaining. It's actually a nice change to see Doc's aides save him rather than vice versa. Still, it seems peculiar.

My only other observation is that Monk employs the expletive “Howlin’ calamities” at least seven times. I’m pretty sure Dent first put those words in Monk’s mouth, but also pretty sure he used them more sparingly.

In poking around the Internet, I see that Cold Death is regarded by some hardcore Doc fans as the best of Donovan’s contributions to the series. This, I suspect, is because it is probably more Dent-like than the others. I’m now looking forward to trying another, maybe the one considered least Dent-like, so I can see what Donovan does when he really cuts loose.

Cold Death is back in print in one of the fine two-in-one volumes from Nostalgia Ventures, complete with The South Pole Terror and and an all-new article by Will Murray.

Sunday: A complete Laurence Donovan story from Speed Detective
Soon: A look at more Donovan Hero Pulp novels

For the original cover image, I am indebted to the great NorthernWriter site.

Today: Links to more Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott's pattinase

Twice Murdered: A story collection by Laurence Donovan

Prior to cracking open this new collection from Black Dog Books, all I knew about Laurence Donovan was that he’d written a handful of Doc Savage novels.

Now I know better. Boy, do I ever. This book makes it clear that Donovan was a pulp-writing powerhouse.  In a career stretching from 1928 to 1948, he turned out well over 400 stories and novelettes, plus more than 50 pulp novels featuring guys like The Phantom Detective, The Black Bat, The Whisperer, The Skipper - and yes, Doc Savage. Like many of his contemporaries, he wrote whatever the market wanted, resulting in a good mix of air war adventures, westerns and mysteries. (How do I know all this? I know, thanks to Tom Roberts' groundbreaking Introduction and overview of Donovan's career, and the eye-opening 18-page bibliography of his works.)

The amazing thing is that despite this enormous output, there has never been a book published with Donovan's name on it. Until now.

All but one of the twelve stories in Twice Murdered were written during the second half of his long career, and all but one originally appeared in the Trojan line of magazines (Spicy Detective, Hollywood Detective, Super-Detective and Private Detective Stories). And that, I think, is a good thing.

By 1938, Donovan had long since mastered his craft, and writing for the Trojan mags allowed him to focus on his own characters and tell stories the way he wanted them told. And he had fun doing it. That sense of enjoyment comes through strong in every tale, and makes them equally fun to read.

Donovan’s style might be described as a cross between Lester Dent and Robert Leslie Bellem. He mixes Dent’s wry humor and rat-a-tat-tat action with Bellem’s mastery of  slang. The result is consistently entertaining, and every tale races to a satisfying conclusion. For purposes of show and tell, I've scanned a couple of title spreads from the original magazines, and invite you to sample Donovan's prose.

(click to enlarge)

More than half of the stories are in the Spicy mold. Donovan handles the required titillation as well as anybody, but because he was older and more experienced (both in writing and living) than the other Spicy regulars, his tales deliver more variety and substance.

“Death Dances on Dimes” takes us into the world of dime-a-dance halls and sleazy strip joints.  “The Snoop” thrusts a house dick into a wild shoot-out with bank robbers in a hotel room.  In “Twice Murdered” a gambling house kingpin tries to scam his insurance company and ends up dead - twice.  “Never Hire a Killer” features a private dick hired to protect a society dude’s girlfriend, unaware both dude and dame have other agendas.  In “She Loves to Murder” a self-professed “love detective” becomes the fourth side of love triangle, with deadly results.

“Footprint of Destiny” from Hollywood Detective, opens at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, where a starlet is murdered just as she places her dainty foot into the wet cement. “The Greyhound Murders” involves the dog-racing crowd and a four-legged murder weapon. The violence in “A Dame Murders Cold” appears to revolve around a dazzling Ming Dragon emerald, but actually stems from a much deeper game. And in “Two Can Play at Murder”, a disgraced ex-cop is lured into a double-murder frame, and neatly turns the tables on the mobsters.

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One of the longer stories in the book, a novelette called “Come In, Killer”, is almost Shakespearean as it plays out with mistaken identities, hidden motives and unexpected deaths. “The Man Who Came to Die” - the longest story of all - is also the strangest. As publisher Tom Roberts tells us in the Introduction, Donovan never sold to the weird mystery pulps, but this one would certainly have qualified. A detective starves himself to skin and bone to impersonate a rich guy thought to be the next victim of a clever and sophisticated insurance fraud scheme. No one in this tale is quite what they seem, and before it’s over half the cast winds up dead.

While I enjoyed every story, my favorite of the bunch was “Reagan Follows Up”, in which a newspaper editor defies his boss to go to war with the mob and expose the killer of a crusading cop. Donovan clearly identified with this guy, as Donovan’s pre-fictioneer days were spent as a newspaperman.

So. While Twice Murdered is Laurence Donovan’s first book, I predict it won’t be his last. Black Dog has finally brought Donovan out of Lester Dent’s shadow, and he won’t be going back.

For more info (and to order) visit BLACK DOG BOOKS.

For a review by James Reasoner, click HERE.

Tomorrow: A review of Donovan's Doc Savage novel Cold Death
Sunday: A complete Donovan mystery story from Speed Detective
Soon: A look at some of Donovan's Hero Pulp novels