Created by Lester Dent
(1905-1959)
SEAN KERRIGAN, a tall, thin private eye from the New York-based Interstate Detective Agency, is sent to Los Angeles to meet an unnamed client, in his only known appearance, the appropriately titled “Terror, Inc.,” which appeared in the May 1932 issue the the pulp Detective-Dragnet. But when he arrives in the City of Angels, and opens the door of a car where he’s supposed to meet the client, a skeleton tumbles out. Doncha just hate when that happens?
But that’s not all. There’s a lightning bolt mark on the skull with red ink– the trademark of a nutjob supervillain who calls himself The Spark who runs a secret organization called — what else? — Terror, Incorporated. We know he’s a super-villain because a) he calls himself The Spark and b) he wears a black cape.
It’s your typical Dent weird mystery tale, caught somewhere between hard-boiled and his Doc Savage stories, full of tear gas, hidden microphones, radio transmitters, secret headquarters, and a fast-acting chemical bath that can reduce a human being to a skeleton in exactly ten minutes, plus the usual fisticuffs and gunplay.
SHORT STORIES & NOVELLAS
- “Terror, Inc.” (May 1932, Detective-Dragnet)
COLLECTIONS
- Terror, Inc. (2013) | Buy this book
Contains “Terror, Inc.” and five other “fear-wrapped” tales of weird mystery and detection.
RELATED LINKS
- The Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot
Lester Dent’s sure-fire recipe for writing a successful pulp story. - Lester Dent’s Rogues Gallery
An ever-growing list of Lester Dent’s detective characters.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
