This post is brought to you by Strange Detectives by G. W. Thomas. Like your detectives strange? Michael Avalone certainly did. And so does G. W. Thomas. This collection of tales features Dr. Drayk, a Victorian eccentric, as well as several tales from Delamare and Bainbridge, an Edwardian duo that look into occult matters. And finally, the Athenodorians show up in 1925 to save humanity from the forces of darkness. A team of heroes dedicated to arcane knowledge, global information, and action! G. W. Thomas gives you Mystery and Monsters!
The Satan Sleuth may just be the most 1970s of all the ghostbreakers. The three novel series is a snapshot of 1974. And this isn’t just dated references to Hollywood’s top two actors, Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The shadow of The Exorcist hangs over everything. Sasquatch, U. F. O.s and all things tarot and Ouiji boards abound! The author hasn’t missed any hint as to who this book was meant for. And at the same time, it feels like an Executioner novel by Don Pendleton. This is full-tilt revenge fiction.
The first book opens with a rather graphic description of how Philip St. John’s (playboy and explorer) wife, Dorothea Daley, is brutally raped and dismembered. The author has no wish for you to doubt the horrific details that will bring a change in Philip. All the gallivanting around the globe to explore for sunken treasure or lost ruins ends, when his soul is crushed by Dorothea’s death. He becomes laser-focused on vengeance. Later this death wish will apply to the forces of the supernatural.
The author of all this strangeness is a colorful guy named Michael Avallone (1924-1999). The first reference I ever had of him was the novelization of Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). Avallone made a good portion of his living writing such books, most famously the first Man From U. N. C. L. E. book (1965). But that wasn’t all he wrote. He had a long-running Mystery series about a private detective named Ed Noon. His first sale was in Weird Tales shortly before that Pulp gave up the ghosts with “The Man Who Walked On Air” (Weird Tales, September 1953). He followed that with a bunch of stories for Tales of the Frightened. He had the chops to write Horror/Mystery novels.
The Satan Sleuth #1: Fallen Angel (1974) begins with the gruesome death of St. John’s wife. This motivation seems typical of avengers. Mack Bolan in The Executioner #1: War Against the Mafia (1969) had to bury his family. In comics it is Frank Castle of the Punisher franchise, created by Gerry Conway. Both of these came after the Pulp original, The Avenger, Richard Benson by Kenneth Robeson (Paul Ernst) that first appeared in 1939. His wife and daughter are killed by a special plane that ejects passengers at 20,000 ft. This act of murder against the hero drives him to become a vengeful superman. Philip St, John is no different.
Avallone, in his frenetic style, tells us how St. John visits his lawyer and asks for money, weapons and drugs, as well as a number of occult volumes (no Necromicon though), all for his upcoming crusade against the forces of Satan. His costume, unlike Mack Bolan and Frank Castle, is not military in style but a cassock like a monk wears. For transportation he has a fast helicopter.
But he doesn’t really need to fly off to some distant place. The four killers have been holed up in a cave nine miles from his mansion in the Adirondacks. We meet the four pathetic individuals who killed beautiful Dorothea. They are Wolfman, a hunchback out of a Shudder Pulp, who beats his low IQ girlfriend, Baby Jane. Dracula is a gay man who is portrayed in the worse Pulp manner, and Doc, a young medical student gone wrong. This quartet returns to the scene of the crime after St. John has returned to the house. He immediately puts into action a campaign to torment and capture the killers.
Which is exactly what he does. He captures each, one at a time, tortures them with drugs and psychology and hand grenades in the case of Wolfman. But ultimately he decides to turn them over to the police rather than kill them. And that’s it. No real plot difficulties, no real story. He meets with his lawyer one more time to discuss the future. Armed with a pile of newspaper clippings of unusual events, Philip St. John will go out into the world to face down the supernatural, real or not.
This first novel had no actual supernatural events. Even Wolfman, the crazed hunchback, doesn’t believe in Satanism. It’s a grift he uses to influence his underlings. Now Avallone is not the first to use this mix of elements. John Dickson Carr certainly did in his mysteries. But Avallone hasn’t been cavorting in the Scooby-doo playground. There is no attempt to convince there ever was anything outre. I found it a pointless tale with nothing much to offer but excessive overwriting that would have been fine in a Shudder Pulp. The whole thing is a vehicle for titillation both sexual and visceral. Not my idea of a good time. But 1974.
Conclusion
That being said: the Satan Sleuth is a ghostbreaker. If not an actual fighter of dark magic, he does fall into the same category as characters like Dr. Thirteen in his original mode, where every case proves to be earthly enough. He also joins investigators such as Doc Savage (who had his own series of slim paperbacks) and even Sherlock Holmes, who said “No ghosts need apply.” This is the hero (or anti-hero since it is the 1970s) colored by strangeness but not actually supernatural. Not my preferred mode but the publisher wanted to pull in The Executioner fans. It’s a formula as old as Ann Radcliffe…
Next time… The Werewolf Walks Tonight…
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