Wes Kaine

Created by Lester Dent
(1905-1959)

“But for all his half-pint size, freckles and grin, quite a few alleged hard actors in the big town had taken to crossing the street when they saw little Kaine coming.”

Yet another of Lester “Doc Savage” Den’t’s colourful private eyes, WES KAINE was an interesting mash-up of Dent’s more straightforward dicks, his gadget-loving “scientific detectives” and his penchant for weird mystery. In this case, it’s the disposal of three bodies that’s the hook, as in “How did three city workers come to be paved over on a newly repaired street?”

Unlike many of Dent’s detectives, the freckle-faced, boyish Kaine’s a small man (“too small to make the New York police force”). But looks can be deceiving — Kaine knows how to handle himself, and has more than a few odd little tricks and gadgets up his sleeve to compensate. Like, sleight-of-hand skills a magician would envy, or the habit of spiking opponent’s guns with the little metal plugs he carries with him. And because he’s such a shrimp and  often has his own gun taken from him, it has a hidden safety on it. You know, just in case…

No wonder Ten Detective Aces tagged him as “the man of a thousand tricks.”

UNDER OATH

• “This story is atmospheric and creepy as well as action-packed, and it’s just a whole lot of fun.”
  — James Reasoner

SHORT STORIES & NOVELLAS

• “Murder Street” (May/June 1933, Ten Detective Aces; aka “The Star Corpse” by William Dexter)

COLLECTIONS

• Terror, Inc. (2013) | Buy this book
  Contains “Murder Street” 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.

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