Dillon is one of the premier New Pulp characters and I enjoy reading his adventures. When I heard the premise of this novel I had to read it - a young Dillon at the start of his career seeking out a mentor to train him,
The hero Dillon seeks out is Jim Anthony Super Detective. Jim Anthony appeared in 25 tales from 1940 to 1943. In recent times he's been revived by Airship 27 and Pro Se Productions. Jim Anthony come from the Doc Savage School of pulp heroes. He's half Irish, half Indian and all American and is an expert tracker and scientist. His original adventures were of the spicy variety.
The story opens with Dillon waiting at the New York branch of the Baltimore Gun Club in the hopes of meeting Jim Anthony. After a discussion between the new hero and the retired one, Anthony takes Dillon to his penthouse apartment in the Waldorf-Anthony when enemies attack.
This is slam-bang pulp adventure where we discover that an old enemy of Jim Anthony is back and even get a flash back adventure to when Jim Anthony first clashed with the German pulp hero Sun Koh. Crossovers and references come thick and fast throughout the book but the pace is so fast it's almost like trying to catch something out of the window of a speeding train.
I would be very surprised if this story was not nominated for a New Pulp Award come next year. This an amazing book and I would recommend grabbing this.
When does this story take place?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure Sean mentioned writing this up for the new volumes of Crossovers at the Yahoo WNU page.
The flashback took place in 1937. There's no date given for the main story if I had to guess maybe about 1990.
ReplyDeleteSean has written this story up and he says it takes up three pages in his word document.
I was wondering when the Dillon series was set. I heard it was contemporary but I wasn't sure.
ReplyDeleteThree pages. That has to be a lot of crossovers.
Yeah it's contemporary. The Vril Agenda is set at the start off Dillon's career..
ReplyDeleteI started noting the crossovers and references but stopped about halfway through as I was got caught up in the story. There are a bunch of German pulp characters and several references to French pulp characters and even a reference to St Trinnians.
I really enjoyed this book as well, even beyond the many crossovers. Good old-fashioned pulpy fun, but with a modern sensibility. Derrick and Josh are two of my favorite New Pulp writers, and this was some of their best work.
ReplyDeleteI probably should read this then.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed Josh Reynold's Executioner novel that I read. He actually managed to put in some characterization into a two hundred page action adventure novel.
I'm overjoyed you liked THE VRIL AGENDA, Brad. It definitely was a book both Josh and I loved writing!
ReplyDeletedoes anyone know all the famous characters that appear in the book ?
ReplyDelete