There’s a story behind my reading of this one. When I was a kid, the elementary school I attended had no school library. Instead, each teacher had a shelf of books in her room that the students could check out. I was in either third or fourth grade, I don’t remember which, when I found a book called DOOMED DEMONS on the library shelf in my classroom. Now, to my nine- or ten-year-old mind, DOOMED DEMONS was just about the coolest title ever, so of course I had to read it. All I remembered as time passed was that it was about World War I pilots, but that fact and the title stayed with me for more than forty years.
So recently I was poking around ABE and decided to search and see if I’d recalled the title correctly. It took only a moment to discover that I had. Cheap copies of DOOMED DEMONS are plentiful. The author is Eustace L. Adams (which I had totally forgotten) and the publisher is Grosset & Dunlap (likewise). Those two items were enough to tell me that it’s what was referred to in those days as a “boy’s adventure book”, a juvenile novel with lots of action and derring-do and a relatively young hero. Grosset & Dunlap was a well-known publisher of such books, and Eustace L. Adams was the author of the long-running Andy Lane series in that genre, as well as writing numerous adult novelettes and serials for such pulps as ARGOSY.
Well, you know where this is leading. Of course I had to order a copy and read it again, more years than I like to think about after reading it for the first time. I’m happy to report that not only does it hold up well, I probably enjoyed it more now than I did back then. It’s the story of a group of young aviators, most of them college age, in France during World War I. The hero is dashing, redheaded Jimmy Deal, and his main sidekick is the chubby, happy-go-lucky Pooch Malloy. Yeah, they’re cliches and stereotypes, and they probably were even in 1935 when this book was published, but I don’t care. I had a great time reading about their adventures. Jimmy crash-lands behind enemy lines and has to steal a German plane to get back to his aerodrome. He carries out a daring rescue of some downed fliers in the English Channel and conducts a dangerous one-man bombing raid on some German submarine pens. He even winds up owning a French country inn that he converts into an officer’s club, until it winds up being the target of a German bombing run.
Adams spins this episodic yarn in a breezy, fast-paced style for the most part, including some excellent aerial combat scenes. When a lot of authors start describing dogfights, I have a hard time following the action, but not here. The images Adams creates are clear and quite striking. Since this is a boy’s book, there’s no sex or cussin’ but plenty of violence. It is a war novel, after all. Although it’s not dwelt on in detail, characters die right and left, including some sympathetic ones. Then the book’s tone takes a sharp, very effective turn toward bleak realism near the end.
I wouldn’t recommend DOOMED DEMONS to everyone, but if you remember reading books like this as a kid or if you’re a fan of World War I aviation yarns, I think you’d get a real kick out of it. I know I did, and this is one instance where I’m glad I revisited my childhood.
(This post originally appeared on a somewhat different form on December 24, 2007. When I reread DOOMED DEMONS back then, I discovered there are several more books featuring Jimmy Deal and Pooch Malloy. I found and ordered copies of all of them. I also ordered all of Adams' Andy Lane books. And in the nearly two decades since then, I have not read a blasted one of them. What is wrong with me?)
4 comments:
James, I recommend Derek Robinson's GOSHAWK SQUADRON and WAR STORY. Best WWI aviation novels ever. (Robinson's PIECE OF CAKE and Len Deighton's BOMBER are comparably great as WWII stories.)
Fred, thanks for the recommendation. I just bought e-book editions of those three Derek Robinson novels and look forward to reading them.
I assume the final question is rhetorical! Nothing is wrong except the clock keeps ticking away and so much remains that we want/need to do while our energy to achieve it all diminishes. And thinking about that will only make us sad.
I think the best thing I ever got out of my school library was a compilation of Malcolm Jameson's Bullard of the Space Patrol stories. Really fun pulp/military scifi, easily on par with the best of Heinlein or Asimov's juveniles and an easier read than EE "Doc" Smith's work. I hunted them down again a couple of years back and discovered there were a few that didn't appear in that anthology, as well as a slew of other stories by the same author, mostly written in the 1940s or 1950s. Pleased to say Bullard stood up to the test of time with shining colors, and Jameson's other works were mostly high quality examples of period writing.
Heartily recommend taking a look at his work, although sadly the Australian free reads site that hosted the bulk of it appears to be nothing more than a 404 error these days.
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