Created by Hugh Pentecost
Pseudonym of Judson Phillips
Other pseudonyms include Philip Owen
(1903 – 1989)
“You don’t hate a weapon–a gun, or a knife, or a meat cleaver. You hate the man who uses the weapon against you.”
— “The Dark Plan”
Sort of like a cross between Dick Francis’ Sid Halley and the Men’s Adventure books of the era, Hugh Pentecost’s JASON DARK is a former cop and private eye who takes on Quadrant International, the powerful global corporation/crime syndicate, after they who tried to dissuade him.
Unfortunately for them, the brutal beating they ordered on him failed, although Dark’s right hand had to be amputated. The result was that he more-or-less declares war on them; a war to the death that Dark is more than willing to fight, well, single-handedly.
Silly? Maybe. But Pentecost gets extra points for imbuing Dark with an extra dose of humanity, making him a fifty-something “short rotund man” who wears glasses–not an indestructible Mack Bolan he-man type– who’s been irreparably damaged but refuses to surrender.
Dark appeared in a half dozen inter-connected short stories in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in the seventies.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Judson Pentecost Philips was born in Northfield, Massachusetts, and bounced around the world before completing his education and graduating from Columbia University in 1925. By the late twenties had already established himself in the pulps as an incredibly prolific writer with his stories about the Park Avenue Hunt Club, about a gang of gentlemen vigilantes, and went on to write more than 100 mystery and detective novels under such pseudonyms as Hugh Pentecost and Philip Owen, as well as under his own name. Among his many series detective characters were hotel manager Pierre Chambrun, whiz bang PR man Julian Quist, hard-boiled police inspector Luke Bradley, gambling joint operator Danny Coyle, Commie-fighting radio host Mark Chandler, amateur sleuth John Smith, thief and adventuress Ivy Trask, artist/avenger John Jericho and private eyes Carole Trevor and Jason Dark. The Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master in 1973.
SHORT STORIES
- “The Dark Plan” (February 1976, EQMM)
- “The Dark Gambit” (February 1976, EQMM)
- “The Dark Encounter” (February 1976, EQMM)
- “The Dark Maneuver” (February 1976, EQMM)
- “The Dark Intuition” (February 1976, EQMM)
- “The Dark Gamble: End of the Trail” (October 1977, EQMM)
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
