Created by John Kobler
Pseudonyms include Warren Lucas
(1910-2000)
Hokey as heck, but Hey! It’s the pulps! One of the infamous “defective detectives,” former medical student PETER QUEST was a nearly-blind New York City private eye who suffered from glaucoma.
Not the world’s most well-adjusted individual, his affliction left Peter a “reckless, world-weary embittered man” with a sizable death wish. He wants to be killed in the line of his chosen duty–fighting the forces of evil–before the “living tomb of blindness overtook him.”
Fortunately, he enjoys a sizable private income from all those failed suicide attempts, which allows him to continue his war on crime, as well as paying the rent for the top three floors of a Fifth Avenue skyscraper, where he has his cubby hole office, almost monk-like in its austerity, and his crime lab and library.
His eyesight has the nasty habit of failing at only the very worst of times. To add to the general corniness of the fill-in-the-blank plots, there was always a beautiful damsel in distress, usually a recent orphan, who touches something in Peter’s heart that makes him renounce his suicidal tendencies, if only temporarily, to save her from, yes, a fate worse than mere death.
Like I said, hokey as heck. But fun.
SHORT STORIES
- “Lust of the Jaguar Queen” (December 1937, Dime Mystery)
- “The Merchant of Damnation” (October 1938, Dime Mystery)
- “The Brain Murders” (December 1938, Dime Mystery)
- “Bubbles of Murder” (February 1939, Dime Mystery)
- “Clinics for Killers” (May 1939, Dime Mystery)
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- The Defective Detectives
Handicapped Heroes
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
