Secret Agent X: Devils of Darkness -- Brant House (Paul Chadwick)

The Man of a Thousand Faces is back facing another evil mastermind in this pulp novel. One constant in the Secret Agent X series, along with all the disguises, is that every criminal the Agent comes up against is the most brilliant, daring, dangerous, etc., that he’s ever faced, and every villainous scheme is the most horrible and earth-shattering. And then the next issue it happens all over again. (This same tendency crops up in the Spider novels by Norvell Page, only more so. But you see it in the Secret Agent X yarns, too.)

This is a pretty good one, with a gang of crooks that has discovered a way to black out all the light in a given area, even during the middle of the day. But of course, they can still see in some mysterious fashion, which allows them to invade and loot banks and other businesses, using metal-tipped whips to lash the blinded, panic-stricken civilians out of their way. The author is Paul Chadwick, who, as far as we know, created the series and the character of Secret Agent X. He wrote the first few novels, anyway, and alternated with other authors on the series for several years after that. Chadwick’s work can be pretty lurid, as demonstrated in the whipping scenes in this novel. He’s also good at keeping up a brisk pace in his storytelling. If you enjoy hero pulp fiction in spite of its occasional excesses – or because of its occasional excesses, like me – then DEVILS OF DARKNESS is well worth reading. It’s never been reprinted, but it’ll be available in the near future from Beb Books.