Note from Doc Talos author/contest judge R. Paul Sardanas: This tale by Brooklyn Wright, featuring the wildest of the Kenneth Robesons and a certain apelike chemist brainstorming a Doc Savage yarn one night in 1935, made me smile from its beginnings in a Queens trainyard to its ending in the company of a madam who is destined to become a pulp villainess. That’s one helluva night.
Comment from author Brooklyn Wright: For all the reverence I apply to the name of Lester Dent, Laurence Donovan was my favorite of the Kenneth Robesons. His novels were so insanely off the wall, I never knew what he would pull next. Sometimes they were terrific from cover to cover, sometimes they crashed and burned. But he really was something. Philip José Farmer, in his book Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, suggested that Monk might have fed quite a few stories to the Doc authors over the years…so why not to Donovan? Another inspiration for this story is the 1985 Scorsese dark comedy film After Hours.
Additional note: If you are interested in submitting fiction to the Summer 2021 contest (first prize is a Bantam Doc Savage paperback Czar of Fear first edition, signed by James Bama) you can read the contest guidelines HERE.
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