The Black Star A Detective Story by Johnston McCulleyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
A rip-roaring pulp adventure. A wealthy young man with a penchant for action goes up against a brilliant criminal mastermind, the Black Star of the title, who keeps his organization so compartmentalized that nobody can betray him or each other, and plans so meticulously that he always gets away with his crimes.
There are, of course, some pulp cliches. The button that opens a trapdoor in the floor and drops the person standing in front of the desk through it into a pit. The accidental discovery of a secret compartment/door/drawer (as seen in Princess Bride, among many other places). The loyal lower-class sidekick, in this case a reformed criminal who the wealthy young man rescued from self-destruction. The love interest who plays very little role and has very little character development; she's just there because a young man like this would be expected to have one. The fat, ineffectual chief of police, of an American city that's never named; it might well be New York, since it has a river and wealthy socialites, some of whom have Dutch names, but then again, it might not.
But there are also plenty of chases, escapes, captures, pitched battles (in which surprisingly few people are even badly injured, despite the habit of the police of firing their revolvers wildly, in part because the criminals use knockout gas guns and have a code against murder), bragging letters from the criminal announcing his triumph over the police and his nemesis and celebrating his own cleverness, and the inevitable downfall of this hubristic character when his opponent proves too clever for him at last. For a while, there's a police detective character, but he drops out of sight towards the end, having acted mostly as a sounding board for the hero.
Zestful and suspenseful, it's everything you would expect from a classic pulp adventure by the creator of Zorro, and I'll certainly read the sequel at some point.
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