Review: Dead at Take-Off by Lester Dent

Dead at the Take-Off 

by Lester Dent 

MysteriousPress.com/Open Road 

Mystery & Thrillers

Lester Dent visits us from the pulp-hero past. He's famous for penning Doc Savage and distilling the pulp formula.

The story dizzingly launches us into Chance Molloy's life who is recognized at the airport, but he immediately denies who he is, to the puzzlement of the man who recognize him. [Read the mesmerizing opening at the end of this post.]

Molloy is traveling as Rand and plans to manipulate Janet Lord by having a man steal her purse and he pretends to beat the man up and rescue her purse. He hopes to get in her confidence so he could investigate her relative, a senator, who shafted Molloy in his airplane business. Molloy suspects something illegal had occurred. Hence, the disguise and investigation.

Meanwhile, Lord recognizes something is fishy about Molloy, but she is drugged by a doctor who is not a doctor, and Molloy's old flame is aboard and could blow Molloy's secret identity. Her love, meanwhile, has the means to expose Molloy in his hands....

Dent is a barrel full of pulpy monkeys, but literary snobs need not waste their time. It might knead their brains into pulp:

"Intensely, honestly, stewardess Mary Rounds hoped that she would like Janet Lord. She believed she would. On the basis, the very thin basis, of observing Miss Lord while she was unconscious, Mary had formed a vague but delicious  liking for Janet, and she was glad she had. Chance Molloy now meant more, in a solidly Gibraltar-like sense, to Mary than she had imagined he would. She was satisfied with this." 

Still, the energy is vibrant string, a deep base thrumming new revelations every chapter. The plot may be overly complex yet possesses a certain joy. The ending is the kind you'd often find in the old black-and-white movies. If you pine for stories like those of yore, you could do worse than read a Lester Dent slam-bang novel.

The opening shows the master pulp writer at the height of his powers (the bastard gets two hooks for one punch):

HE SWUNG HIS HEAD away, tried to pass on. But the man named Fertig saw him and thrust out an enthusiastic hand. "Hello, Mr. Molloy!" Fertig cried. "How are you, Mr. Molloy? ... God-amighty, this is a nice surprise, Mr. Molloy!" 

He felt trapped. He could not ignore Fertig, so he halted, but his attitude made it plain that he had only paused on his way into the terminal. He realized with relief that he barely knew Fertig. He did not so much as know Fertig's other name; therefore, Fertig must scarcely know him. So he gazed at Fertig tolerantly, blankly, without recognition, and waited. And presently Fertig's face became redder than the heat in the street had already made it. "Aren't you Mr. Molloy?" Fertig asked. 

"No," he lied. 

He let his tolerant expression become slightly smiling. But he did not speak again, avoiding the chance that Fertig might become sure of his voice. The heat pressed against him; it reflected up from the sidewalk and hurt his eyes, and it was inside his crisp, medium-gray, tropical-worsted suit. Suddenly he remembered where he had met Fertig, at an executive session where Fertig had presented some dull sketches for the new BETA terminal in Atlanta. Fertig, an architect, had impressed him at the time as being stodgy and without imagination, and he recalled disliking Fertig, resenting the man's callow glad-handing and obvious salesmanship; even Roy Cillinger, vice-president in charge of maintenance, who had no imagination beyond keeping air liners flying, had thought Fertig's ideas stupid, and they had dismissed Fertig as being quite inadequate, then had forgotten about it. Now he felt no qualms at having to stare Fertig down. 

"Aren't you Mr. Molloy?" 

He shook his head. 

"That's funny ... I'd have sworn ..." Fertig was smoking a fat, mink-colored cigar, and he took it from his mouth with a quick grab, leaving a damp flake of tobacco clinging to his moist, full lower lip. "I guess I made a mistake." 

He shrugged. 

"Sorry," Fertig said. 

The taxi driver came across the sidewalk with Molloy's bag. Fertig crowded into the revolving door ahead of the taxi driver and simultaneously a colored porter, wearing gray trousers piped in maroon and a white shirt, hastened for the bag, so that for a moment all three—Fertig, cabby, and porter—seemed to chase each other around in the revolving door, while the door made tired breathing and flapping sounds and emitted gasps of chilly, conditioned air from within. 

He waited. He was shaken. His plans, laid with such meticulous care, now seemed menaced at the very beginning.