Wed 24 Sep 2014
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review: WILLIAM ARDEN – A Dark Power.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[3] Comments
by Francis M. Nevins
WILLIAM ARDEN – A Dark Power. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1968. Berkley, paperback, 1970.
During the same years he was writing the Dan Fortune private-eye novels under his Michael Collins by-line, Dennis Lynds took on the pseudonym William Arden and launched another series, this one dealing with industrial spy and PI-in-spite-of-himself Kane Jackson.
The five Jackson novels are written in a spare, unadorned third-person style reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett’s, and their protagonist is very much the hard-bitten operative, without the leavening of compassion one finds in other Lynds detectives, like Dan Fortune or Paul Shaw.
Most of the Jackson exploits are distinguished by their setting in the jungle of high-level capitalism, principally in the chemical, metallurgical, and pharmaceutical industries where Lynds worked as a trade-publications editor before turning to fiction.
In A Dark Power, first and freshest of the series, Jackson is hired by a New Jersey pharmaceutical combine to recover a missing sample of a drug potentially worth millions. The trail leads through the mazes of interoffice love affairs and power struggles, and several corpses are strewn along the path.
Although Lynds tends to get lost in his own plot labyrinths, this time he keeps the story line under firm control, meshing counterplots with fine precision, skillfully portraying people trapped by their own drives, and capping the action with a double surprise climax. Jackson reaches the truth by clever guesswork rather than reasoning, but this is the only weakness in one of the best PI novels of the Sixties.
Of the four later Jackson exploits, the most interesting is Die to a Distant Drum (1972), which, like Lynds’s novels as by Mark Sadler, takes as background the turmoil of the Vietnam era. Jackson poses as a revolutionary bomb-maker and joins a Weatherman faction in order to infiltrate a chemical plant and bring out certain evidence of industrial piracy. The result, as usual with Lynds under whatever by-line, is a fine and thoughtful thriller.
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
The Kane Jackson series —
A Dark Power. Dodd, 1968.
Deal in Violence. Dodd, 1969.
The Goliath Scheme. Dodd, 1970.
Die to a Distant Drum. Dodd, 1972.
Deadly Legacy. Dodd, 1973.
September 25th, 2014 at 10:44 am
This is a good review of an outstanding detective novel.
That you for reprinting this!
One point Nevins makes cannot be emphasized enough: this is a well-plotted mystery novel. The plot craftsmanship is at Golden Age standards.
This review reminds me, that I need to track down and read “Die to a Distant Drum”. Collins left a huge output, and I have much catching up to do.
September 25th, 2014 at 12:29 pm
Although I have not checked, the books that Lynds did as Michael Collins should not be too difficult to find. Those he did as William Arden may be another matter. For example, abebooks.com has only four dealers offering copies of A DARK POWER for sale, one of the paperback and three of the hardcover.
If you’re looking to purchase a copy of DISTANT DRUM, there are 16 copies on abebooks, all hardcovers. There probably wasn’t a paperback edition. I think all of the Mark Sadler books came out in paperback and shouldn’t be hard to find. I’ve never read any of the Sadler books, which featured Paul Shaw, a “corporate gumshoe,” as described on the Thrilling Detective website. I’m starting to lose ground in keeping up with all the books I want to read.
September 25th, 2014 at 2:54 pm
Steve
Any but the first Arden novel were relatively hard to find in the seventies and eighties. I liked the series though if only because it didn’t read like every other private eye series. The Sadler books also came out in paperback, but not all the Dan Fortune’s did. I’m pretty certain only the first Arden book came out in paper — it’s the only one I’ve ever seen.
Clearly Dan Fortune was the best of Lynds many series, but I liked everything from the novelization of the Peter Ustinov Charlie Chan film (and much better than the movie) to the Shadow novels he did for Belmont as Maxwell Grant.
I barely knew him as a person, but I always considered him one of the ultra pros like Pronzini, Block, Westlake, or Estleman, a skillful and intelligent writer able to handle almost everything he put his hand to. I was always envious that his various series and names never sounded that much alike, a Dan Fortune distinctive from a Kane Jackson, and Jackson from Paul Shaw.