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10th out of 65 books
—
16 voters
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril
by
Paul Malmont (Goodreads Author)
"The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril" is a thrilling debut novel that casts the rivalry between two of pulp fiction's most revered writers into its own saga, which bursts from the pages with blood, cruelty, fear, mystery, vengeance, courageous heroes, evil villains, dames in distress, secret identities, disguises, global schemes, hideous deaths, beautiful psychics, superweapon...more
Hardcover, 371 pages
Published
May 23rd 2006
by Simon & Schuster
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Prior to reading this novel, my experience with pulp fiction was limited to a Tarantino movie and a few stories I read as part of a Master's course in crime and detective stories. I came to the book with no knowledge about Walter Gibson or Lester Dent and no real interest in pulps. How much of the novel is true? I'd say about 1/4 truth, 3/4 pulp. But truth is not the point--the story is everything in this novel and, as the narrator says, "never let the facts get in the way of a good story."
Set...more
Set...more
Jan 07, 2008
Jeff
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Dixie the dame with a monkey on her back. I envy that monkey.
“Look at this book!” He said as I was sitting in the break room.
He held it aloft, showing off his prize. CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL the book title read. It looked good. He knew I had a longstanding belief that you could indeed judge a book by its cover, and this cover looked good. It had the flair of CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL, which is a book I adore. It had the historical novel feel of THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY. And I wanted to read it.
This book was about pulp writers, which I...more
He held it aloft, showing off his prize. CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL the book title read. It looked good. He knew I had a longstanding belief that you could indeed judge a book by its cover, and this cover looked good. It had the flair of CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL, which is a book I adore. It had the historical novel feel of THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY. And I wanted to read it.
This book was about pulp writers, which I...more
4 likes · like · see review
I'm of two minds about this book. On the one hand, it was an excellent read: I breezed through it in a couple days and stayed awake long after the sun came up this morning to finish it. Malmont does a great job painting New York of the late 30s, and has an excellent, informative grasp on the inner workings of the pulp scene. On the other hand, the action of the story didn't feel pulpy at all. The monsters weren't scary, the villain wasn't larger than life, everyone makes sensible decisions and n...more
Aug 13, 2011
Julie Davis
added it
Saw that Scott and Jesse interviewed this author about his sequel to this book, which somehow had escaped my notice. I love the Dallas Library, I've gotta say. They got me a copy in a few days. So I'm dipping my toes in to see how I like it. So far it looks like a love letter to pulp fiction with L. Ron Hubbard as the young go-getter who is determined to make his fortune writing for John Campbell's Astounding Stories magazine. Also featured so far are Lester Dent (Doc Savage) and Walter Gibson (...more
Feb 29, 2008
Vulgrin
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
pulp lovers, sci-fi / fantasy / mystery lovers
Recommended to Vulgrin by:
Scott Miller
This is a "good" book, but not a "great" book. Not really ever being a reader of pulps, I didn't feel either way about the subject matter going in, but now I definitely want to go back and read some Shadow and Doc Savage novels. (In fact, I think Paul Malmont should write his own pulp style novel - it's very obvious he knows the genre backwards and forwards)
I didn't really ever feel "attached" to the characters - and it certainly wasn't a book that I couldn't put down. The story starts off prett...more
I didn't really ever feel "attached" to the characters - and it certainly wasn't a book that I couldn't put down. The story starts off prett...more
1 like · like · see review
I welcome any new novels that follow in the pulp footsteps of Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," and Malmont's is a particularly fine example. Real-life authors Lester Dent and Walter Gibson, each as accomplished and fascinating as the dime-novel heroes they created, become the protagonists in a deliciously pulpy tale of diabolical plots and mysterious cults. Literary Easter eggs abound -- including a wonderfully appropriate use of H.P. Lovecraft -- and if they lean...more
I really enjoyed this book; it's maybe not for everyone. If you like pulp fiction and/or comic books, you'll probably like it. And if you like or are interested in the history of those things, you might really like it. It's basically a somewhat meta pulp story where the heroes are all famous pulp fiction authors. It works, for me, because the story and the characters are clear and very fun and the referential stuff provides an occasional lagniappe that's amusing (Siegel & Shuster make an app...more
For someone who's into the old pulp-era stuff, this is a wonderfully fun metafiction book. I think that the high-concept idea of having the two pillars of the "pulpateer" writer community star as the heroes in their own pulp adventure really works. The author generally pulls it off, though I thin that there are a few promises that he could have come through with a bit stronger. Maybe one or two too many "heroes of the day" showed up in the story, and my suspension of disbelief was shaken a bit....more
Jun 09, 2007
Liz
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
you,if you're not bothered by mixing genres
I'm not sure whether to classify this as a mystery/thriller, action/adventure, sci-fi horror, historical fiction, or "pulp," which is what the author calls it. It features a cast of "real" characters -- people who actually existed -- the "pulp" writers of Dperession-era America (including a pre-scifi, pre-Dianetics L. Ron Hubbard) who band together to solve the mystery of their fried H.P. Lovecraft's mysterious death. It'n not great -- certainly no Kavalier and Clay -- but it's engaging and ente...more
It is the 1930's. The writer of "The Shadow" and the writer of "Doc Savage" end up forming a team to stop a renegade army officer and a Chinese warlord from releasing the eponymous peril upon New York City.
H.P. Lovecraft knew the nature of the peril, but may have died before revealing the antidote. It falls to Walter Gibson (the Shadow) and Lester Dent (Doc Savage), along with a get-rich-quick schemer known as L. Ron Hubbard and some other figures you may have heard of (Robert Heinlein, Stanley...more
H.P. Lovecraft knew the nature of the peril, but may have died before revealing the antidote. It falls to Walter Gibson (the Shadow) and Lester Dent (Doc Savage), along with a get-rich-quick schemer known as L. Ron Hubbard and some other figures you may have heard of (Robert Heinlein, Stanley...more
More of a 3.5. I have the affection for Paul Malmont that I have for anyone who has a true love about what he writes. That said this book would easily have been five stars if it had been a little more Kavilier and Clay and a little less Scooby Doo.
Still it's impossible for me not to love a book in which the men who invented Doc Savage and The Shadow teem up with El Ron Hubbard, Bob Heinlein, HP Lovecraft, and Louis Lamour to thwart a mad chinese warlord's plan for REVENGE!!!!
Still it's impossible for me not to love a book in which the men who invented Doc Savage and The Shadow teem up with El Ron Hubbard, Bob Heinlein, HP Lovecraft, and Louis Lamour to thwart a mad chinese warlord's plan for REVENGE!!!!
Jan 31, 2008
Rob
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
pulp fans
Shelves:
2007
Malmont manages to pull off some neat tricks with this book. Using some of the classic pulp authors as his protagonists, he creates his own pulp about them -- a delicately over-the-top yarn full of larger-than-life villains, narrow escapes, square-jawed heroes, and a skin-of-their-teeth ending. And he does this all rather thoughtfully: he stays true (or true enough) to the pulp style while giving it his own, somewhat more modern spin.
And he manages to blur his own lines of "what's real and what'...more
And he manages to blur his own lines of "what's real and what'...more
As a big fan of hard-boiled fiction and the pulps, I'm really looking forward to this one. I've only read the first chapter, but how can you go wrong with a book that opens with Walter Gibson and Lester Dent debating pulp writing in the White Horse Tavern while Ron Hubbard looks on? And then the first sentence of the next chapter indicates it's told from the perspective of Howard Lovecraft. I have high hopes for the next 350 pages or so.
Update - Really enjoyed this one. The plot flew along, some...more
Update - Really enjoyed this one. The plot flew along, some...more
In 1937 New York, a disgruntled Chinese warlord and a ruthless American Colonel find an unclaimed stash of Chinese Republic bank notes and a stash of WWI poison gas, which they plan to use to tip the war in China after assassinating an old enemy in Chinatown. The only people standing in the way are two pulp novelists--Walter Gibson (the Shadow) and Lester Dent (Doc Savage) who stumbled onto the outrageous plan. They'll have to turn to the skills and character that define their fictional creation...more
This is the first of Paul Malmont's books honoring the pulp era, early adventures and sci-fi in particular, and is great fun to read even if you've never had much exposure to the originals. I certainly haven't, and I think if you can envision a pre-television world you can see what role the pulp fiction magazines played. "B" Movies were similar - a training ground for the makers and light, simple entertainment for the audiences. I liked the second book as well (Amazing, Astounding, and Unknown)...more
Historical fiction is an odd duck, and this piece is even more so. A pulp about pulps, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril is an odd read to get into because you're reading about real people. The main characters are the authors of The Shadow and Doc Savage. HP Lovecraft gets the plot rolling. L. Ron Hubbard is a key player. Seriously, that's what really knocked me. It was so hard to wrap my head around him being a character.
But once the book gets going, and you settle into the, well, pulpyness of it...more
But once the book gets going, and you settle into the, well, pulpyness of it...more
A rollicking old style – and yet somewhat post-modern – adventure story in which Walter Gibson (the writer of The Shadow), Lester Dent (the writer of Doc Savage) and the young L. Ron Hubbard investigate a mystery which starts – in part – at H.P. Lovecraft’s funeral.
Dent and Gibson are authors totally unfamiliar to me, and even though I know Hubbard’s name it isn’t really because of the books he wrote. Yet Malmont is able to conjure up what these men’s work was about, to make the reader understan...more
Dent and Gibson are authors totally unfamiliar to me, and even though I know Hubbard’s name it isn’t really because of the books he wrote. Yet Malmont is able to conjure up what these men’s work was about, to make the reader understan...more
4 likes · like · see review
Walter Gibson is America's best selling author--he writes novels and stories about The Shadow--but he's not a happy man. He's especially unhappy when he's impelled to go to Providence for the funeral of his old acquaintance H. P. Lovecraft, along with brash young Ron Fuller, and meets a good-looking gravedigger who calls himself Otis Driftwood. Meanwhile, Lester Dent, America's second best-selling author of the Doc Savage pulp stories and Gibson's sworn enemy, gets involved in some strange happe...more
I made it to page 248 before I finally set this book down. I just couldn't do the last 100-odd pages. Malmont clearly did his homework and has a real enthusiasm for the pulps. But his writing is just bad. He tells instead of shows using long, information-heavy monologues that sound like Wikipedia entries. He goes stunningly breathtakingly maddeningly overkill on adverbs and melodrama (she gasped!). His characters are prefabricated sterotypes. And he completely lost me when the POV kept switching...more
This book exceeded my expections. I loved it. Gibson and Dent both made interesting characters. The best part was all the little easter eggs scattered throughout, references to golden age figures of pulp and comic books. The story got really tense near the end and I ended up staying up about an hour too late finishing it. I'm definitely digging some pulps out of the reserve stash after this one.
"That's pulp!"
It's a claim heard more than once in this impressive, but uneven meta-version of mid-20th Century adventure stories. H.P. Lovecraft, zombies, communists, death gods, and a pre-Scientology L. Ron Hubbard all make an appearance. And yet the book doesn't really get going until the halfway point. That's an awfully long time to wait for a cliffhanger.
Recommended for fans of the genre.
It's a claim heard more than once in this impressive, but uneven meta-version of mid-20th Century adventure stories. H.P. Lovecraft, zombies, communists, death gods, and a pre-Scientology L. Ron Hubbard all make an appearance. And yet the book doesn't really get going until the halfway point. That's an awfully long time to wait for a cliffhanger.
Recommended for fans of the genre.
If you were one of those folks who were born decades too late for the pulp book era, but who were exposed to the front line name authors in later reprints or collections, then you may find this an excellent read.
I suspect that if you have never heard of Walter B. Gibson, Lester Dent or L. Ron Hubbard (real life authors that become the protagonists of this novel) then you will find the book a bit confusing, spending too much time on local color and inner monologues and history.
For the rest of us,...more
I suspect that if you have never heard of Walter B. Gibson, Lester Dent or L. Ron Hubbard (real life authors that become the protagonists of this novel) then you will find the book a bit confusing, spending too much time on local color and inner monologues and history.
For the rest of us,...more
Brilliant novel. Malmont plays very handily with the idea of "pulp" vs. "reality", blurring the lines carefully between the two so much that by the end of the novel we expect that all of the events of the story occurred exactly as written--or at least, occurred exactly as told to Malmont by the participants (which yet again obscures the reality of the story.) Our main characters are well-known authors, real-life personages in the murky world of post-Depression pulp fiction: Lester Dent, aka Kenn...more
A delicious combination of historical and pulp fiction served with a liberal dose of metafictional fan-service (the heroes are themselves fictionalized iterations of actual pulp fiction writers of the 1930s), The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril is highly entertaining, even if it isn't destined to top anyone's list of "great literature of the 21st century." That said, I have given the book high marks for its exuberance, its wit, and its breezy sense of adventure. Malmont is to be lauded for his fearl...more
Since I’ve essentially become obsessed with the Hard Case Crime book club, I was incredibly excited to find a book like The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril while I was perusing the bargain books at Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago. It looked like it had everything I was currently interested in as well as some really cool looking cover art work. This looked to be pulp adventures at their best. Unfortunately the saying “You can’t judge a book by it’s cover” is very true in this case.
Chinatown starts...more
Chinatown starts...more
Fun book. Set in the 1930s among a group of real life pulp writers--one of which is the young L. Ron Hubbard before he creates his cult that celebrities flock to--as they go on an adventure. It's about pulp and kind of pulpy--violence, sex, magic, Chinatown, suspense, heroic action scenes...you know, pulp.
I think I would have enjoyed this book more if I had read it over a more condensed period of time and had more of a background in the pulps. That said, I always enjoy a story with superfluous adverbs, magic, dastardly villains, and zombie boat cruises.
Oct 29, 2007
Matt
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
fans of pulp characters but also modern writing
Great use of "real life" authors with all of the pulp themes that populated those same authors books -- Doc Savage, The Shadow, etc. All my childhood favorites and the accompanying themes put into a book an intelligent book for "grown ups".
This book is on my normal reading list, as it is more of a fantasy than fiction, but I enjoyed it more than a I thought that I would. Based on the Pulp Fiction writings in the 1930s & 40s, the author spins weaves in known writers such as Lovecraft and Hubbard into his fictional drama, which is itself a work of pulp. Sadly, Heinlein is also mentioned which I don't think did him justice. The pulp adventure of pulp writers was too far fetched to be remotely plausible (hence the pulp), but it wa...more
Well done bit of fanciful historic fiction. If you are unfamiliar with the pulps, Doc Savage. The Shadow, etc. then a large portion of the wonder within this book may be lost to you. The author did some research and it shows. The author shares his love of the Pulp Era, and it shows. The author accords the Pulp masters the respect their work deserves. Those writers did fifty to a hundred-thousand words a month for as little as a penny a word, on an old typewriter, and their first drafts read bett...more
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The author of THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL and his latest, JACK LONDON IN PARADISE."
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May 15, 2010 01:54pm