Paul Malmont The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril

Paul Malmont

Simon & Schuster, Jun 2006, $24.00

ISBN 0743287851

In 1937, best-selling pulp writers, William "The Shadow" Gibson and Lester "Doc Savage" Dent work on real mysteries in an egotistical effort to be crowned the best action-adventurer writer in the world. Gibson, hearing whispers that pulp peer H.P. Lovecraft was murdered at the Providence, Rhode Island waterfront, is in town making inquiries. At the same time Dent investigates an impossible homicide in New York's Chinatown.

However, the two authors find their separate cases merge as they get caught in the middle of a tong war and battle pirates. That might frighten off most writers, but not the Shadow of Doc Savage as their inspections spin further out of control with war in China chemical weapons as part of the arsenal. At the rate Gibson and Dent are going they might miss spinning the next installment of the Shadow and Doc Savage, but then again collaboration in writing might prove novel.

Impossible absolutely; yet no one will care as Paul Malmont pays homage to the great pulp fiction writers (others appear too) of the 1930s and 1940s. The zany storyline is fast-paced and quite entertaining hooking readers from start to finish even as the audience anticipates who will show up next. THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL is great escape fun as pulp fiction is supposed to be.

Harriet Klausner