Early on in Paul Malmont’s deliriously enjoyable novel THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL, a writer lists all the ingredients for a successful pulp story: “Secret identities and disguises. The Yellow Peril. Superweapons. Global schemes. Hideous deaths. Cliff-hanging escapes. Horrors from the grave. Lost lands. Overwhelming odds. Impossible heroics. Unflagging courage. Oh, and I almost forgot! Gun-totin’, lingo-slingin’ cowboys.”
CHINATOWN itself delivers all of these things in spades – with the added bonus of kung fu – and yet it is not pulp fiction as much as it is fiction about the men who made it. Namely, Lester Dent (creator of Doc Savage) and Walter Gibson (writer of The Shadow), bitter rivals until the murder of a fellow nickel-a-worder, “shudder” writer H.P. Lovecraft, eventually forces them to work together to save their own hides. And quite possibly the world.
In the 1930s, Gibson – then the bestselling writer in America – pays his respect to Lovecraft’s aunt, with eager writer (and future crackpot cult leader) L. Ron Hubbard in tow. Hearing that the young man was killed by human hands and not by stomach cancer as they believed, Gibson pokes his nose into the medical lab where Lovecraft worked. What he finds defies explanation in our rational world, but would be right at home in Lovecraft’s. This discovery leads him and Dent (separately, at first) to a secret passageway under an abandoned theater in Chinatown and to an uncharted isle full of zombies. Yes, zombies – that’s part of the joy of this novel, as it rarely ventures down the roads you’d expect. After all, this is a book that is presented in issues and episodes rather than parts and chapters.
Though exciting and swashbuckling, this is not a banged-out, first-draft, cheap-thrills throwaway. It’s a literary tale about two very successful writers who nonetheless operate in a void since their publishers force them to work under pen names. There’s a bit of an ongoing struggle of self-identity when you have to hide behind pseudonyms, when the public sees you one way and you feel another entirely. Malmont’s moving, lyrical depiction of that struggle just so happens to involve secret codes, curvy psychics, donut chemists, hidden treasure and barrels of toxic nerve gas.
Malmont’s obvious love for the pulps is equaled by his imagination in storytelling. Just reading about these two writers at work (and at odds) is pleasurable enough, but to see them have to assume the heroics previously displayed only through their typewriters gives PERIL an added punch, allowing it to dip its toes into genre-infested waters without actually diving in. And even his analogies are era-appropriate: “He sank to his hands and knees, bolts of pain radiating through his body like the energy waves broadcasting from the RKO Studios’ theatrical emblem.”
Throughout the book, Gibson and Dent refer to it all being about the ending. Malmont’s may be a tad melodramatic, but at least it services the story. I hated to see it come, though, because I wanted to hang out with Dent and Gibson for several more adventures. This is not only a near-flawless debut, but a clear candidate for year-end honors. –Rod Lott
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Finally getting around to reading this (on your advice), and am enjoying it immensely.