Dennis Lynds

The word started going around this afternoon that Dennis Lynds has passed away. This is terrible news, and very unexpected, at least by me. Dennis was a guest on the Rara-Avis list a few months ago and seemed as eloquent and enthusiastic as ever.

One of the nice things about being a writer is that you sometimes get to meet your heroes, or at least correspond with them. The first book I ever read by Dennis Lynds was probably THE SHADOW STRIKES, published by Belmont Books under the Maxwell Grant house-name in the mid-Sixties. Of course, at the time I had no idea that in this case Maxwell Grant was really a writer named Dennis Lynds. All I knew was that I had listened to reruns of the Shadow radio show and loved it, and now here was a book about the character. (I was only dimly aware of pulps then and had little if any knowledge of the Shadow's history.) I thought the book was great and picked up all the other Shadow novels that Belmont published over the next few years. All of them, I learned later, were really by Dennis Lynds.

Later I read some of his Three Investigators novels, written under the name William Arden, and I read all the Man From U.N.C.L.E. novellas published in the digest magazine under the name Robert Hart Davis, and again, I loved them without knowing that some of them were by Dennis Lynds. I didn't really know who he was until the late Seventies, when I started buying the Dan Fortune novels that he wrote as Michael Collins, as well as reading his short stories in various mystery digests. My friend Tom Johnson knew Dennis because Tom had a nearly complete collection of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE, and Dennis wrote the Mike Shayne novellas as Brett Halliday for about seven years during the Sixties. Tom corresponded with Dennis and put me in touch with him, and as a fledgling writer in the early Eighties, I found myself trading letters with an author whose work I had read extensively and always enjoyed. Dennis was an Old Pro, even then, and he consistently gave me some of the best writing advice I ever got.

We drifted out of touch over the years, as often happens, but I continued to read and enjoy Dennis's books. One afternoon some years ago, the phone rang and on the other end was Gayle Lynds, Dennis's wife, who at that time was about to launch her very successful career as an author of suspense thrillers. I don't remember now why Gayle called, but I know we had a pleasant conversation and I even talked briefly with Dennis, the only time we spoke. I'm glad we had that chance, and I'm glad we got to trade a few emails while he was on Rara-Avis. He was a great writer and a fine man, and he will definitely be missed.