[This is a re-run of a post that first appeared 8 years ago. I'm repeating it because I've decided to cover the first 5 Dan Fowler novels as a part of the ongoing "In Order" series. I'll soon be doing the same with a 2014 post covering the first Tom Corbett novel, as I'll cover all eight novels in that series as a part of the "In Order" series as well.]
Read/Watch 'em In Order #163
It was 1935 and the editor-in-chief of the Thrilling
Publications was about to start a new pulp magazine. For a likely theme, one
only had to look to the movies--where the James Cagney film G-Men was raking in
big bucks--and to real life, where the FBI was locked in often mortal combat
with gangsters such as Dillinger, Nelson and Machine-Gun Kelly.
(It is Kelly, by the way, who is said to have coined the
term "G-Men" when he shouted "Don't shoot, G-Men" as he was
arrested.)
So the new magazine would be called G-Men. The featured hero
would be a dedicated agent named Dan Fowler, who would use both Tommy guns and
brains to bring the worst public enemies to justice. Or to the morgue. Fowler was
pretty okay with either result.
Actually, that makes Fowler seem a little bloodthirsty,
doesn't it? And there are moments when he's in the middle of a fire fight with
villains in which he does revel in the idea that the men he's mowing down are
getting their just desserts. But he does take them alive when he can and he
does follow the rule of law.
Fowler had a good 20-year run in the pulps, becoming one of
the mainstay heroes of the industry. Reading the first story--titled
"Snatch" and published in the October 1935 issue of G-Men--it's easy
to see why. It's a slam-bang and entertaining action tale.
It was written by George Fielding Eliot, though the pen name
for all the Fowler stories would be C.K.M. Scanlon. Eliot was a pulp veteran
who knew how to keep a story moving fast without sacrificing good plot
construction.
The plot of "Snatch" is inspired by the real-life
Purple Gang. Here, it's the Grey Gang, led by the brutal Ray Norshire, who are
on a crime spree in the Mid-West. They've robbed a bunch of banks, killing a
number of people along the way, and have now moved on to kidnapping.
Dan Fowler is assigned to head up the effort to stop the
Grey Gang. He grew up in the area and his dad is the sheriff of one of the
small towns within the sphere of the gang's operations, so he seems the best
man for the job.
And he is. He manages to trap and catch several gang
members, save a kidnapped baby and then catch most of the rest of the gang,
though the wily Norshire keeps getting away. Dan is building up a suspicion
that there's a mastermind working behind the scenes. Unfortunately, this
mastermind might be one of several local law enforcement figures, which would
explain why Norshire managed to be in just the right position at the right time
to kill a weak-willed gang member who was about to talk.
Fowler suspects Norshire will try to bust one or more of his
gang out of jail. So he comes up with a plan that the Feds will use again 14
years later in the Cagney film White Heat. He goes undercover as a prisoner to
follow along during the escape.
This doesn't work out well, as the bad guys tumble to him
not long after the jail break. He manages to get away, only to be arrested by
local cops who don't believe he 's a Federal agent. This gives Norshire and his
gang time to get away.
So it's time for yet another plan--one that will both trap
the Grey Gang and get the secret mastermind to give himself away.
It's a fun story. There's a number of good action scenes,
the best one involving Fowler trying to get away from the Grey Gang after they
realize he's a Fed. The story itself is very well-told--Fowler follows up clues
logically and pursues intelligent hunches based on the evidence. He definitely
exists in a pulp universe rather than the real world, but good storytelling
makes him believable all the same.
Kind of like Cagney in the movie G-Men. Gee whiz, now I
gotta watch that again.
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