Book Review: The Death Blast by Lester Dent

I was surprised by how enjoyable the story was. Lester Dent's short novel The Death Blast which featured the entry of the detective Lee Nace, also known as the 'Blond Adder' was my first taste of the author's work. Dent, a writer of the pulp era and a very prolific one, was most famous for his Doc Savage stories.

But before Doc Savage, there was Lee Nace.

Blond-haired and slim-faced (which earned him his serpentine moniker), Nace is a detective who seems to find himself in life-threatening situations all at the drop of a hat. And this is how he is introduced in the story of the Death Blast: with a lady poking a gun at his back.

Detective Lee Nace is in a hotel. He is there because of a telegram which asked him for a meeting with a man with a Russian name. The hour is dawning when a redhead woman confronts him with a gun. From there, Lee Nace is in constant trouble with the police and a killer who can murder by exploding them. And the bomb is untraceable. Will he find the truth of the telegram? The mystery of the woman?

The story is told in quick pulp fashion—lots of actions and little of droll. There is not a single page wasted in some useless philosophical rambling or endless dialogue that revealed nothing. All words seem to be sleek and functional, the fat-trimmed without mercy.

But this does not mean the story is without style. There is a sharp-edge in Dent’s writing, a quickness one can follow without getting dizzy. There is no moment in the story—beginning, middle, or end—where the reader is left discombobulated either about the scene or the plot which I appreciate immensely. I have browsed plenty of stories where I have turned at least fifteen pages and I don’t know who the characters are or where they are.

But this does not mean the story is without flaw. The quick style of the writer became a double-edged sword. It faltered at the ending. The climax was written masterfully, but it limped at denouncement. It was a perfect time for the characters to finally have a breather and basically ‘talk it out’ about what had happened to them at the course of the story, about how their psyche was affected from the events, but Dent pulled the curtain too soon upon the stage and left me wondering if I had missed a previous page.

Still, it is worth a read. You won’t be bored, that is guaranteed. To write like Dent does with such entertaining prose is what a lot of writers seek, and reading Dent felt like a master in action.