I suspect I’ve been reading Erle Stanley Gardner longer than any other author. It would have been 1963 or ’64 when I checked out my first Gardner novel from the bookmobile. It was one of the Donald Lam/Bertha Cool series published under the pseudonym A.A. Fair, and the bookmobile clerk probably shouldn’t have let a ten-year-old check it out, but he knew I was already reading above my grade level, so to speak. And I’ve continued to read Gardner’s work, at least two or three books a year, sometimes more, ever since. I’ve never read anything by him that I didn’t enjoy, either.
That trend continues with “Above the Fog”, a novelette published in the February
1930 issue of the little-remembered aviation pulp FLYERS. Dave Flint is a pilot
who flew in the Great War, but as the story opens on a foggy dawn, he’s working
at the Oakland airport with a buddy from the war who laments that they don’t have
any action or excitement in their lives anymore.
Then a beautiful woman comes flying out of the fog, accidentally drops her purse
before she flies off again when she realizes she’s being pursued, and Dave sets
out to track her down, return her bag, and help her with whatever trouble she’s
in. This lands him in a day-long whirlwind of fistfights, shootouts, and high-flying
dogfights as he attempts not only to locate the girl but also to solve a murder
and find a missing millionaire.
Gardner never lets the pace slow down for more than a moment or two as he heaps
trouble and danger on Dave Flint’s head. The characterization may not be very
deep, but who cares? This novelette moves. And Dave is a likable and
fairly smart guy. Gardner’s descriptions of flying and the weather achieve a
sort of rough-hewn poetry in places. He was a great storyteller and a better
writer than he often got credit for.
I enjoyed “Above the Fog”. It’s available to download as a PDF on the Age of Aces website, along with a lot of other great aviation pulp fiction. If you’re
a Gardner fan, you’ll probably want to read this rarity.
1 comment:
A shame to say I've barely read Gardner beyond a few of his shorter stories in anthologies over the years. My mother was a big PERRY MASON fan, and subbed to EQMM in the '60s when we lived in Alaska (including '63, when I was in utero toward the end, and '64, when I started breathing on my own), but I should give more of his work a try, to say the least.
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