Hell in Boxes: The Exploits of Lynn Lash and Foster Fade by Lester Dent

by Lester Dent

In 1932, Lester Dent jumpstarted his pulp fiction career when he created scientific detective Lynn Lash. Operating out of a New York skyscraper, Lash tackled super-scientific threats the police could not handle, opening the way for Dent’s greatest creation, the immortal Doc Savage. All three Lash cases are included in this volume, including a rare story not published during Dent’s lifetime, "The Flame Horror." Two years later, Dent produced a new gadget-wielding sleuth, Foster Fade, the Crime Spectacularist. Working for a major metropolitan tabloid, Fade solved crimes so bizarre they defied description. The entire Crime Spectacularist trilogy is presented for the first time ever in an authorized edition. This is Dent at his imaginative best--vintage hardboiled detective fiction with a weird menace twist!

Paperback

First published June 17, 2012

About the author

Lester Dent (1904–1959) was born in La Plata, Missouri. In his mid-twenties, he began publishing pulp fiction stories, and moved to New York City, where he developed the successful Doc Savage Magazine with Henry Ralston, head of Street and Smith, a leading pulp publisher. The magazine ran from 1933 until 1949 and included 181 novel-length stories, of which Dent wrote the vast majority under the house name Kenneth Robeson. He also published mystery novels in a variety of genres, including the Chance Molloy series about a self-made airline owner. Dent’s own life was quite adventurous; he prospected for gold in the Southwest, lived aboard a schooner for a few years, hunted treasure in the Caribbean, launched an aerial photography company, and was a member of the Explorer’s Club.

Reviews

[Bobby Underwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doc Savage legend Lester Dent created Lynn Lash and Foster Fade in the early 1930s, before he began writing Doc Savage and during his early days writing the stories which would make him immortal. All six stories are great pulpy fun as long as you like early pulp, Lester Dent, and don’t try to compare it to Doc Savage.

There are three stories each featuring two different weird-science detectives in this collection. Lynn Lash is a blending of those wild and wooly pulp adventures which involve a strange crime with old-fashioned detective work. He is known in these stories as the living Sherlock Holmes. The Lash stories are quite fun, but not as good as Dent would be in a couple of years when he created Foster Fade.

There are similarities between Dent's two creations. Both use gadgets and science to solve weird crimes which are baffling police. Both series have a Manhattan setting. Interestingly, Fade works as an investigator for a major paper in New York called - The Planet. It’s logo and lobby are marked by a huge globe. Call to mind anyone you know?

Well, the similarity ends there, but it’s fun to note. Fade is The Crime Spectacularist. He has a secretary at the paper named Dinamenta Stevens, a platinum blonde of the hard-boiled variety who ghostwrites all his adventures for the Planet. In the story, Hell in Boxes, she gives a little tart who got the better of her during the case what for, making it a pulpy delight.

This stuff is great fun and has a place in pulpdom history. It’s a shame Dent simply didn’t have time — and was possibly discouraged from doing so — to continue writing Foster Fade stories once Doc Savage became so huge. One of the Lynn Lash stories, The Flame Horror, was originally rejected and never published in Dent’s lifetime. It is speculated, however, that he slyly pushed it over to his pal, the legendary Norvell Page, who reworked it as a Spider story. Spider aficionados might get a sense of déjà vu when reading The Flame Horror for that reason. But it’s here in this collection as Dent’s original Lynn Lash story.

The LYNN LASH stories are as follows:

THE SINISTER RAY

THE MUMMY MURDERS

THE FLAME HORROR


The FOSTER FADE stories are as follows:

HELL IN BOXES

WHITE-HOT CORPSES

MURDER BY CIRCLES


Following the six early pulp stories is Dent’s outline for a Lynn Lash story, showing how he planned it out, which is interesting. And there is some interesting information about some of the early pulp magazines in the forward. Norvell Page and Lester Dent are two important figures in pulp, and it’s great to have Dent’s Lynn Lash and Foster Fade stories available to readers in some format. Depending on what you know about early pulp and this sub-genre, your mileage may vary on these stories, but if you have an appreciation for the origins of pulp, or Lester Dent — a.k.a. Kenneth Robeson — this one is worth picking up.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doc Savage scribe (under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson) Lester Dent created Lynn Lash in 1932. Like Doc Savage, Lash battles fantastic threats (a blindness inducing ray, a mysterious thing that mummifies victims instantly) and uses gadgets (a gun concealed in a briefcase); however he's relatively colorless, a typical "rich guy who solves crimes" investigator. His secretary Ricky, a brainy tomboy who speaks seven languages, is way cooler.
Foster Fade gets the book to four stars. The "Crime Spectacularist" works for a sensationalist paper as in-house detective: if there's a colorful crime Fade investigates, solves it with a lot of flash, then female reporter Din Stevens writes them up in lurid prose (she's much better suited to this kind of work than "female interest" stories). Regrettably we only got three Fade stories before either the rush of work on Doc Savage or a dispute with an editor killed the series.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

So these are classic pulp stories. Easy and quick reads.

Three comments... First, the primitive gadgets and science were actually very interesting. Vacuum tubes and miniature record players, metal contact plates on the wall of Foster Fade's office to activate and open hidden panels, and pressure switches beneath the carpet.

Second, in the first story involving Chinese villaims, racial terms were used to describe them that no contemporary author could get away with.

Third, I can't tell that an editor ever went over these stories prior to them be published. There were some very interesting word choices that an editor would've corrected.

[Mark Stratton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid, goofy, over-the-top, pulp fun.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a Lester Dent aka Kenneth Robeson...Doc Savage fan I enjoyed reading other Dent stories and comparing the similarities to Doc Savage.