More Words, Deeper Hole

Maracas (John and Gwen Bagni)

On discovering the ship he is serving on is carrying contraband, our hero decides to cut himself in for a piece of the action. This allows him to appreciate a sequence of double-crosses from the inside.

Kind of a downer (but part of the general pattern that cheaters never prosper in this series). The portrayal of the South Americans was ... unfortunate and given the date, possibly based on the bandits from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

There sure are a lot of stories involving ships in this series.

Plunder of the Sun (David Dodge)

An American adventure, smitten by an attractive Peruvian woman, agrees to smuggle a small package into Peru for her boss in exchange for a promise (from her boss) that she will be "most grateful" to him. In short order, he is caught up in a race to find the lost treasure of the Incas.

Interesting that the situation with the woman is pretty much as bad as it seems to be. Also, that the marker of the bad guy is he just wants to melt down the artifacts so he can sell the gold.

Night in Havana (Burnham Carter)

A career criminal in Havana is determined to go straight so he can marry his beloved Amalea but rather than come to the marriage without any assets at all, he decides to carry out one last job. What could go wrong?

The key to surviving stories like this is to be a charming reprobate of the sort who might plan incriminating evidence on a friend but who won't leave that friend to bleed to death and who will go to extremes not to lose his fiancee's nest egg. It also helps if the antagonists are witless thugs and an American couple the author goes out of his way to paint as unsympathetically as possible.

The Great Impersonation (E. Phillips Oppenheim)

As Europe teeters on the edge of WWII, the Germans decide to take advantage of the similarity in appearance between a German spy and a disgraced British aristocrat; the man Britain believes is Sir Everard returned with an African fortune is funded by the Nazis to set up a network in the UK and Ireland.

I wonder about one thing SPOILERS ( Read more... )

When the Man Comes, Follow Him (Ralph Bates)

Following the cryptic clues left by a dying man, four gangsters venture into an unforgiving desert in search of the Lost Dutchman Mine. Nature is bad enough but worse is simple human greed and the inability of people to trust each other.

I am pretty sure if I was dying of a gunshot wound, I wouldn't manage to get out such a long list of clues so coherently.

There's a certain Jack London element to some of this.

The Adaptive Ultimate (Stanley G. Weinbaum, as "John Jessel"))

An earnest doctor, eager to offer humanity a discover that would render us immune to most of life's travails, discovers to his horror the dying woman he tried it on has become the greatest monster imaginable, a woman with power!

Yeah, so this pretty awful in pretty much every conceivable way. Although I do take the point that it's probably best not to use instant immortal juice on someone who seems to be a sociopath.

I did like how the two doctors discuss how horrid she looks right in front of the dying woman. Bedside manner: as mythical in this time as medical ethics.

He Who Rides the Tiger (James Norman)

A man wakes in China to find he has lost the last eight years to amnesia. The Chinese authorities in the form of Inspector He Who Rides the Tiger would liked to know what he was doing in those eight years, because those years span 1941 to 1949 and since he wasn't working for the Allies, he may have been a collaborators. Others have a good idea what he was up to and would like very much for him not to remember.

So, 1949, China: think Quinto and his wife are communists?

Red Wine (Lawrence G. Blochman)

An American detective heads to Borneo to haul a murderer back to justice. He assumes his prey will stand out in Borneo but as the amused overseeing explains there are three American men working on the plantation and all of them fit the rather vague description; worse, they all know why the detective is there. The detective is forced to fall back on unsubtle leading questions to force the killer to reveal himself.

Apparently the krait and the seductive native woman were added by Escape to pad this put to 29+ minutes.

The Lost Special (Arthur Conan Doyle)

A detective is stuck with a seemingly impossible to solve mystery: how could a train vanish without a trace from a single tracked route between stations?

Very reminiscent of a Holmes story but not in this form a Holmes story.

A Dream of Armageddon (H.G. Wells)

A man of our time (or rather 1901) dreams that he is a 22nd century man, a once-powerful politician, driven from office because of an unsuitable romance. The man of the future is asked to return to power before foolish men can tip the world into war but because he would be required to set his lover aside he refuses. He resolves to simply turn his back on the world that rejected his lover; unfortunately for him, his desire to ignore the world does not mean the world will ignore him.

I thought the romance might be a reference to Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson but the original long predated the radio play.