The Weird Adventures of The Blond Adder

Introduction Will Murray

Lester Dent used to boast that his true claim to fame rested not as the creator of Doc Savage, but in the fact that he had scored nineteen consecutive cover stories in Ten Detective Aces. Strictly speaking, this is a wild exaggeration. The number was closer to ten. But looking at the record, it’s understandable why Dent would remember it that way.

Ten Detective Aces started off as an early Harold Hersey gangster pulp, The Dragnet Magazine. It debuted in 1928. Two years later, gangster stories were on the way out, and the traditional detective tale of clues and ratiocination was considered old-fashioned. Action and melodrama were what readers craved. So in 1930 the title became Detective-Dragnet and metamorphosed into Ten Detective Aces in 1933.

By this time, the publisher was Aron A. Wyn, later to start Ace Books. The A. A. Wyn school of pulp writing was a revival of the 1920s melodrama which had just begun to cool in its literary grave before it was exhumed and made to dance, like a captive puppet, on new strings.

Dent came in early in ’32 and bowed out at the end of 1933, missing only one issue in a run of fourteen. So he dominated the magazine for two solid years, scoring most covers and seeing his name almost always cover-featured, even when the cover painting was not reflective of one of his stories.

Dent’s debut in that magazine was “The Sinister Ray,” a novelette starring a scientific detective in the mold of Arthur B. Reeve’s Craig Kennedy, the so-called American Sherlock Holmes who was such a huge hit in The American Magazine and hardcover books. Lynn Lash only appeared one more time, but in between Dent put other scientific sleuths through their paces in electrifying tales like “The Invisible Horde” and “Terror, Inc.”

When Detective-Dragnet retooled as Ten Detective Aces with the March 1933 issue, Paul Chadwick’s criminologist of the weird, Wade Hammond, was carried over, but not much else. That issue shows signs of hasty remaking. The running heads on each page said simply “Detective”—suggesting that it had been made up as an issue of Detective-Dragnet and partially replated.

New characters soon began sprouting up — Frederick C. Davis’ memorable Moon Man and Norvell W. Page’s Ken Carter both debuted in the May issue. Others, like Richard B. Sale’s The Cobra and Emile C. Tepperman’s Marty Quade, followed in short order. As Carl McK. Saunders, author Philip Ketchum revived his dormant series starring Captain John Murdock of the Central City police.

As the apparent star contributor to Detective-Dragnet, Lester Dent made the transition easily, scoring most of the 1933 covers, as he had many of the 1932 covers. He contributed a trio of interesting weird stories about random agency detectives, but initially offered no new fresh character of his own. But 10DA—as it is sometimes styled — was becoming a vehicle for series heroes and having just started writing Doc Savage, Dent was evidently asked to create one by editor Harry Widmer — or perhaps it was Wyn himself, who remarked in print that sometimes series just “happen.” He advised contributors thusly: “The best way for an author to break in with a series character is not to submit three or four stories of the series at the start, as so many do, but rather to allow the editor to discover the series — particularly if the writer is a new contributor.”

Lee Courtney Nace, AKA the Blond Adder, debuted in “The Death Blast,” July, 1933. Dressed like a priest and sporting an angry serpentine scar on his forehead (evidently inspired by Tarzan of the Apes), Nace took on the creepiest cases this side of Wade Hammond — who was rarely cover-featured. Four more stories followed. Dent started writing the series in May, 1933, which makes it contemporary with the classic first-year Doc Savage adventures, Brand of the Werewolf, Meteor Menace and The Monsters. Lester was hot that year!

It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Lee Nace as an ego projection of Les Dent. Like Lester, Nace was born in Missouri, and possessed many other Dentian traits, including a habit of eating in different restaurants every day. The author gave his new hero a wildly-varied background to justify his many skills, rather like Dent’s own. Having been a stage magician, an acrobat, cowboy, chemist and dabbling in other exotic fields, the Blond Adder was equal to almost any challenge. His bag of tricks was virtually limitless. Many future Doc Savage gadgets were first fielded in the Nace stories. The character was one of those who paved the way for James Bonds’ reliance on unusual weapons and scientific devices.

The Nace series was an interesting blend of science detection, the action-detective story, and a new sub-genre some editors called the “menace” story. Other names were coined. Sometimes it was “mystery-horror,” or “ultra-mystery.” The formal weird menace sub-genre would grow out of this emerging trend, later filling the pages of Popular Publications’ Dime Mystery Magazine, Terror Tales, Horror Stories and many others. But in Ten Detective Aces it was still in its nascent stages.

For Writer’s Digest, literary agent Lurton Blassingame described this type of pulp tale as it was in 1933:

There is an unusually good market today for the well-written story of menace. If this word does not give you a clear picture of the type of fiction desired, I suggest that you read The Phantom of the Opera and the adventure of Sherlock Holmes in which he uncovers The Hound of the Baskervilles. Then to get a little closer to the present, reread Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu and you will be ready to read current magazines with a full understanding of what editors mean when they speak of “menace.” In this type of story some person or thing hangs a veil of horror over the characters in the story; we never know when this “menace” will strike, but we do know it will continue to commit depredations until the hero does his stuff and overcomes it in the final climax. Dracula was a menace play.

Blassingame went on:

These two stories represent the two tendencies in the “menace” fiction being published today. In The Hound of the Baskervilles we do not know who is committing the crimes or why; so in addition to the menace there is also a mystery. Sax Rohmer, however, lets us know the identity of his criminal, but the monster Fu Manchu is too clever to be captured and continues to commit his crimes despite all the efforts of the police to apprehend him.

So was Mary Roberts Reinhardt’s popular play turned film, The Bat, which was certainly another major influence on this type of tale. As were other 1920s stage dramas such as The Cat and the Canary and The Monster. This trend also seized Hollywood, carrying clear into the 1930s. And where Hollywood ventured, the pulps inevitably followed.

Most of 10DA’s star series characters delved into menace cases, but as Wyn explained to Writer’s Digest in 1934, he wanted to see more than what he called “menace-action” manuscripts:

The one feature on which we do insist is that all of our stories must be fast-moving and develop plenty of suspense. The menace-action type story is one of the best for us, but it has unlimited possibilities of variety, and variety is what we are seeking. For example, in Ten Detective Aces we use stories showing the human side of life; stories of the hard-boiled detective presenting life in stark reality; horror stories, stories from the murderer’s point of view, stories with or without romance or woman interest. Our detective stories are usually against an American background, but occasionally a good yarn featuring an American hero against a foreign setting will also fit into our scheme. And we use an occasional humorous detective yarn. In fact, our policy is so elastic that even a good action-detective story against an underworld background or in which underworld characters are featured, has a chance with us although we emphatically do not want the straight gang-mob yarn. The typical straight deductive story has no place in our lineup — but in a short-short, for example, if it has enough suspense and a really clever surprise twist, we might make an exception. Or in a story where deduction plays an important part but which is worked out through action.

The latter variation was a Lester Dent specialty. In his article, “Why Aren’t Your Detective Stories Selling?” Blassingame singled out Dent’s first Lee Nace exploit as an exemplary example of the menace plot:

In the current issue of Ten Detective Aces Lester Dent has a mystery-menace story where the criminal does not disguise himself as something fantastic, but succeeds in spreading terror and death through his cleverness. At the end he is revealed by the hero as [DELETED], who decided that he would kill off all the persons concerned and keep the wealth for himself. It doesn’t make any difference to the editors whether you use a disguised menace or not; your menace must be kept logical whether he uses a disguise or whether he simply gets by in his own character and dress.

The Nace series is doubly fascinating because it ran parallel with the first year of Doc Savage Magazine. Gadgets that first appeared in Nace became standard Doc Savage equipment. Some of these plots and locales were revisited in Doc Savage as well. “The Diving Dead” anticipates The Annihilist. “The Tank of Terror” prefigures the Oklahoma oil backdrop of The Derrick Devil. That story’s colorful outlaw, Robin Hood Lloyd, is based upon Oklahoma bad boy, Pretty Boy Floyd, who was still alive and robbing banks at that time. He would be gunned down the following year. The 1933 Chicago Exposition site of “The Flaming Mask” reads as a dry run for 1939’s World’s Fair Goblin. Dent probably visited the Exposition before writing this tale.

And if there is any proof that Dent, not his Street & Smith editors, introduced Patricia Savage into the series, it is the appearance and development of Lee Nace’s equally resourceful cousin, Julia Nace, who first pops up in “The Diving Dead” and soon becomes a full partner in his agency — something Pat Savage never succeeded in doing with Doc Savage.

Nace’s nemesis, Sergeant Gooch of Homicide, is also introduced in “The Diving Dead.” He was evidently meant to be a continuing foil, but the locales of the follow-up stories precluded a second appearance. Gooch was to have debuted in “The Skeleton’s Clutch,” but was written out of the final draft. As originally conceived, the character had a broad Irish accent.

Earlier drafts of “The Skeleton’s Clutch” have Lee Nace carrying an automatic. His character trait of not carrying a weapon began with this story, and runs parallel to Doc Savage’s identical no-pistols policy early in his adventures.

Most of Dent’s titles were changed. “The Death Blast” was originally “The Hoarder Horrors.” “The Skeleton’s Clutch” was “The Green Skeleton Kills.” “Hot Oil” became “The Tank of Terror,” and “The Flaming Mask” had been “The Hell Heat.” Only “The Diving Dead” stood unchanged. All but one rated a cover illustration.

The Lee Nace series ended abruptly, and circumstantial evidence indicates that a combination of overwork and nervous exhaustion led to its discontinuance. Dent had wanted to keep his byline alive and before the public while ghosting the monthly Doc Savage novels under the house name of Kenneth Robeson. It proved to be too Herculean a task for the former brass-pounder from Tulsa. After skipping the November 1933 issue, Lee Nace made his final bow.

The ending of Lee Nace’s brief but colorful career was not the last of this type of character. In 1934, Dent moved over to Dell’s All Detective Magazine and offered another reformulation for editor Carson W. Mowre. Foster Fade, the Crime Spectacularist, ran only three installments, alas. In 1937, this concept achieved its ultimate expression with Click Rush, the Gadget Man, who ran in Street & Smith’s Crime Busters from 1937-39. Running for 19 episodes, it was the longest and most successful of Lester Dent’s many gadget detectives.

While all but two of the Lee Nace stories have been reprinted over the last 30 years, their appearances were widely scattered. This Altus Press edition marks the first time all five of the bizarre quintet have been collected in a single volume. We’ve gone back to the surviving manuscripts and reedited and restored all but one. As a bonus, included also is Lester Dent’s previously-unpublished biographical background profile of Lee Nace.

And now, it’s time to meet the enigmatic and resourceful Blond Adder as he takes on some of the most diabolical fiends in pulp history….