The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril Book

A rollicking old style - and yet somewhat post-modern - adventure story in which Walter Gibson (the writer of The Shadow), Lester Dent (the writer of Doc Savage) and the young L. Ron Hubbard investigate a mystery which starts - in part - at H.P. Lovecraft's funeral.

Dent and Gibson are authors totally unfamiliar to me, and even though I know Hubbard's name it isn't really because of the books he wrote. Yet Malmont is able to conjure up what these men's work was about, to make the reader understand what their fiction stood for and why the first two in particular were so important to America is the thirties. This is not biography so I have no idea how close he matches his fictional portrayals to the real people, but the characters who populate this novel are undoubtedly real and alive. Interestingly as well, although the villain of the piece is Chinese, the author doesn't simply echo the works of Sax Rohmer (which would look uncomfortably out of place in the twenty first century). Instead the villain has a proper context in the world political situation and real motivation for what he's doing.

The plot is an enjoyable piece of nonsense involving toxic gas, and there are points where it all drags a little, but this is an amusing and diverting yarn which brings back to life real figures who possibly don't do deserve their current obscurity. It's certainly more fun than I imagine any novel set in the thirties about Hemmingway and Fitzgerald would be.