Hot Money and Hot Diamonds

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #165

The third Dan Fowler novel--Hot Money--ran in the December 1935 issue of G-Men. George Eliot Fielding, writing under the house name C.K.M. Scanlon, continues as the writer.

This one builds on an interesting premise. 100 grand in cash was paid as a ransom in a kidnapping. The kidnapped lady was released, but the crooks got away with the money. That money, though, is hot. The serial numbers are known. If its spent anywhere, the Feds will swarm down on the spendee.

But the action soon moves out of the United States. In Paris, an Apache (the name used in the early 20th Century for Parisian street thugs) was arrested and found with a bill from the ransom in his possession. Dan Fowler is sent to the City of Lights to check this out.

Dan comes up with a plan to psych out the Apache and get him to talk, but this lead takes them to a murdered man. While chasing a suspect, Dan is briefly captured by the villains. He gets the best of his guard, killing the man, but the main villain gets away without being identifed.

Another bill has turned up, this one used by a snotty rich woman who is known for trying to sneak jewels past Customs whenever she returns to the States. Both Dan's attention and the attention of various bad guys turn to the jewels she is currently carrying. This brings the action back to New York City, though before arriving, Dan is knocked on the head and tossed off a passenger ship.

The action scenes in a Dan Fowler novel are always great--Dan swimming until exhausted, then getting ashore to be pursued by gunmen, is wonderfully intense. But the novel also works as a police procedural. When the jewels are eventually stolen from the snooty rich lady, the number of suspects expands and the G-Men pursue various leads in a logical, step-by-step manner. 

There's still plenty of action, though. A raid on the gang that pulled off the original kidnapping leads to a wild gun battle and the bad guys escaping on a boat equipped with a heavy machine gun. Later, there's a raid on a society wedding using tear gas, which involves Dan in a tussle to take a gas mask away from one of the villains. The climatic action scene has Dan holding off a quartet of bad guys, running out of ammo while trying to survive long enough for help to arrive. 

It's great stuff, perhaps the strongest of the series so far. Of course, I couldn't help noticing that Dan Fowler--supposedly the best G-Man in the business--gets himself captured a lot. You would think they would warn against that sort of thing when you are training at Quantico. 

Somebody's Stealing the Silk!

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #164

Dan Fowler's second appearance was also written by Geroge Fielding Eliot (using the house name C.K.M Scanlon). Dan's first case was an action-packed adventure against armed bandits. This time--well, I didn't count bullets fired or corpses found while reading it. I have an impression that "Bring 'em Back Dead" has a little less action than "Snatch." But if so, the difference isn't much. Much like the Robert Stack version of Eliot Ness, Dan burns through enough government-supplied ammo to probably contribute to the federal deficit.

It's another great story. Dan and a few fellow G-Men are assigned to stop a gang that is stealing valuable imported silk. We join Dan aboard a train, where he and his team are guarding a shipment of the stuff.

If I were to criticize any aspect of the story, it would be the inclusion of Jimmy--a newly minted, very eager agent who hero-worships Dan. That the kid is going to get killed is obvious pretty much from the moment he's introduced. To be fair, though, he gets a chance to save Dan's life before he goes down.

Jimmy's death and the theft of some of the silk despite the presence of G-Men shows Dan that this will not be an easy case to crack. Soon, he's up to his armpits in corrupt businessmen and several more murder victims. Dan's girlfriend, Sally, is not an agent herself and goes undercover as a receptionist at a silk importing business that might be involved.  It's also predictable that Sally will get kidnapped at some point, but she conducts herself with courage and intelligence even when this happens.

The case unfolds logically, with much of the novel having a police procedural feel to it. I like that Dan is isn't the only smart person among the good guys. When investigating a lead in San Francisco that takes Dan to Chinatown, he allows a local cop who knows the area to take the lead. One of Dan's fellow G-Men helps save the day at the end by acting on his own initiative. Dan Fowler stories aren't meant to be a realistic portrayal of detective work, but the story generates the veneer of "realism" necessary to make the story work.

The action scenes are uniformally great, especially a brutal fist fight Dan has with a bad guy and the book's final showdown, in which Dan is alone on a boat with an unknown number of villains, making use of an improvised gasmask and a captured tommy gun to hold his own. It's all great stuff. 

"The Avenger of an Outraged Law!"

 

[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.

"...the avenger of an outraged Law!"

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.