LET'S KILL AMES (Doc Savage 1947)
From September-October 1947, this is the third of the five first-person narratives that Lester Dent experimented with. The story itself is a perfectly good little thriller but what makes it interesting is the reactions the narrator undergoes as the story whips along (it all takes place in a day or two).
First, I have to say LET'S KILL AMES is one more in the long list of Doc Savage novels where the title is inappropriate or downright misleading. This seemed to become prevalent around the time the bronze man was smacked in the head and nearly ruined for life in 1944, so it seems likely to be an editorial problem. The story is not about a plot to kill Miss Ames, and although she is poisoned at a late point, it's a relatively minor plot point.
The story itself centers on a scheme to poison three men with radioactive materials (here called 'radiants') and extort money for a cure. (The poison is in an insoluble salt solution, which can be drawn from the body. Personally, I wouldn't volunteer to try this, suspecting a lot of permanent damage would be done in any case.) To Doc, this is
one more in a long succession of murder plots he's been foiling most of his life and it would probably not be anything he'd particularly remember.
But the story is told from the point of view of a participant, the mercenary Travice Ames. Miss Ames is a con artist and swindler who thinks it's perfectly normal to deceive people and squeeze every dollarout of them she can. Despite her brazen ways, she hasn't been doing too well and is trying to retrieve her luggage from the hotel that has
locked her out for non-payment when she stumbles into the radioctive-poisoning plot.
Ames decides to call the famous Doc Savage in on the case, let him do the dirty work while she bilks the victims out of some cash for herself, and then abscond. Longtime Doc fans will smile at the surprises she's in for. Ames never really does reform or turn angelic, even after being terrorized, nearly murdered and seeing Doc in action. You're so used to seeing petty crooks (or pretty crooks, in this case) see their errors after meeting the hero that this is a more realistic development.
Lester Dent's writing has become much more polished and slick over the years, and he's kept his innate storytelling skill. Every now and then, he throws in a phrase that's genuinely amusing. When a guy with a cold, clammy mitt shakes hands with Ames, she thinks that it feels "as if a catfish had swallowed my hand." Also, it's amusing that when she's trying to impress someone with Doc, she makes him sound like "a combination of Einstein, Tarzan of the Apes and the FBI." (This is reminiscent of Dent's frequent remarks that Doc was a combination of Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan and Abraham Lincoln.)
What is most intriguing, though, is a throwaway moment when Ames reflects 'On the other hand, I had heard: he was a gnarled freak whom nobody had seen. He was really two other men. He was a front for the FBI and he was really the whole FBI. He was financed by the US mint.." The idea that 'Doc Savage' could actually be a team of a wizened genius and an athletic troubleshooter, rather than one man combining these attributes, could make for a series in itself. It would be as if Nero Wolfe himself kept secret and Archie goodwin pretended to be a super-genius two-fisted crimefighter.