I’ve known
Steve Payne for a couple decades now. Steve contacted us when we started
publishing Classic Pulp Fiction Stories,
and said he wanted to write pulp fiction. I don’t remember if I suggested Secret Agent X, or if Steve suggested
the character, but in the May 1996 issue of CPFS
we began the six-part serial of The
Freezing Fiends, the first Secret
Agent X novel since March 1939. Steve wasn’t finished; he had become a fan
of pulp author G.T. Fleming Roberts, and made the Secret Agent X character his own. In the February 1997 issue of Double Danger Tales, Steve’s second
novel, Master of Madness appeared in
a three-part serial. The third novel, Halo
of Horror was published as a three-part serial beginning with the October
1998 issue of DDT. With the end of
the FADING SHADOWS genre magazines, Steve took a break from writing to
concentrate more on his profession, but has been working on numerous plots for
the character. Meanwhile, “Master of Madness” and “Halo of Horror” were both
reprinted by Matt Moring of Altus Press, and 14 years after “Halo of Horror”,
Altus Press is releasing Steve’s fourth Secret
Agent X tale. “The Resurrection Ring” is a titanic novel of 170,000 words,
the longest Secret Agent X novel ever
written. I thought it was about time we introduce this amazing writer to
everyone.
Tom: Steve,
how about telling everyone a little about yourself; your background, history,
where you’re from, that sort of thing. Although you have been in the pulp
community since the mid ‘90s, there may be some out there who do not know you.
Steve: I was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1963. However, I grew up at opposite ends of the
Pelican State, both down in Baton Rouge, and here in Ruston, in the heart of north
Louisiana’s Pine Hills. For college I
earned a Bachelor of Arts in British History at Louisiana Tech. That B.A. in hand, I attended Harvard
Divinity School, where I had hoped to earn a Master of Theological Studies in
Church History. Soon after I had
completed one year of the program, however, my dad suffered amputation of both
legs. So I elected to stay in Ruston, and
work as a substitute teacher. This period
confirmed my love for teaching and inspired my enrollment at Tech. In short order I had earned a Master of Arts
in English, with specialties in 18th Century British Literature and
20th Century American Literature.
During junior high school (maybe in 1976 or ’77) when I still lived
in Baton Rouge, I stumbled upon a paperback reprint of The Creeping Death by the master, Walter Gibson. Then
we moved back to Ruston, where I acquired The
Romanoff Jewels, another classic novel of The Shadow. Not many months afterward, I encountered The
Avenger (still love Justice, Inc. and
The Blood Ring!), in addition to the fabled
Man of Bronze, Doc Savage. (The Magic Island/Ost was the first of
Doc’s novels I read, if I recall correctly.)
Later, still, thanks to Will Murray and you, I grabbed some of the other
hero magazines: Operator #5, The Black Bat (Black
Book Detective), a little of the Phantom
Detective, and Secret Agent X.
Tom: I
believe you teach English Literature in college. Who are your influences in writing,
besides G.T. Fleming-Roberts? I think you’ve mentioned A. Conan Doyle before.
Anyone else?
Steve: When I was still teaching full-time, my
students often expressed surprise at my love for popular fiction. Sadly, we (some members of the Academy and
many snobbish types) have sold them a “bill of goods” that one can’t be learned
and enjoy popular literature. That’s
simply untrue! To your question: In class I went out of my way to express
appreciation for popular writers like A. Conan Doyle, Fleming-Roberts, and
Walter Gibson as inspirations for writing effective, “tricky,” mysteries. In the same vein I would mention Lester Dent
as an electrifying tale-spinner. Or I
would allude to Paul Ernst as another entertaining pulpster, one noteworthy for
developing the believable pulp
superhero, G.T.F.R’s take on Agent X notwithstanding, of course!
In terms
of so-called “literary fiction,” I have developed many favorites: Russian novelist Feodor Dostoevsky, the
Southern Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor, satirist Jonathan Swift, and, for
me, a recent discovery Caroline Dormon.
The mother of the Louisiana environmental movement, she was an excellent
writer and a tireless crusader. She was
also the nation’s first woman to work in an official capacity with the US
Forestry Service. These notables don’t begin to count the thinkers from my
divinity days: Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German
theologian and anti-Nazi martyr; Will D. Campbell, a radical Baptist preacher
and crusader from the Civil Rights era and beyond; Dorothy Day, a Catholic
crusader for social justice; and Dr. Cornel West, one of America’s most insightful
and challenging contemporary theologians, particularly on issues of racism and
classism which still bedevil this country.
Tom: Secret
Agent X has always been a secondary pulp hero, vastly overshadowed by Doc
Savage and The Shadow. Why don’t you give the reader some information about the
character?
Steve: Published by Periodical (Ace) Publications, the
Agent starred in a series of 41 recorded novels, from February 1934 to March
1939. He himself is a mysterious,
nameless crime-fighter, dubbed the “Man of a Thousand Faces,” likely in
imitation of the legendary silent film actor Lon Chaney. The original writer Paul Chadwick (and
possibly an editor like Rose Wyn) had stitched the Agent together, so we’re
told, from scraps of Doc Savage, The Shadow, and perhaps The Phantom
Detective. Thus in combating crime, the man
of mystery displayed much of Doc’s physical prowess (mastery of jiu-jitsu and
boxing, with other unarmed combat techniques also part of his amazing
repertoire) and brilliant mental faculties (expertise in a wide range of codes
and ciphers, languages, and modern sciences).
In addition the Agent owned The Shadow’s and The Phantom’s deductive
abilities, besides those last two characters’ mastery of disguise. On the surface he might sound highly
derivative. But as I’ve discovered over
the past year or so, Agent X’s story, his literary development, is much more
complicated than was formerly believed.
Some of
his inspirations are the original tricksters of Western narrative, Odysseus (of
Odyssey fame) and Jacob (from the
Hebrew Bible/Old Testament), not to mention Joshua and Caleb, the legendary
Israelite spies from the Hebrew Bible. If
readers flash forward to the dawn of the 19th century, they will see
an even more profound influence on the Secret Agent, the real-life François Vidocq, a French
citizen and sometime criminal. Later Vidocq
would metamorphose into a secret agent and the world’s first modern detective. Mentioned by name in X’s own stories, Vidocq was also a
master of disguise and deception who established the first modern police force
and the science of criminology.
But one American literary character indirectly
shaped the Agent’s development, and that of all American espionage creations to
come. This antecedent to X is James
Fenimore Cooper’s creation Harvey Birch, from the novel The Spy (1821). A tale of
the Revolution, Birch, one of Washington’s spies, uses disguise, maintains a
“secret sanctum” of sorts, and performs various kinds of derring-do. And he performs his deeds while considered a traitor to the Continental cause. The parallels to Agent X are quite striking
when we consider the way that both the law and the criminals regarded X as
their mortal enemy. And the likenesses
do not end there, when we take account of the sacrificial natures of both men,
in the midst of great loneliness and overwhelming odds.
In his own
career X combined the traits of a Federal operative and a lone wolf vigilante,
just as you and Will Murray have shown.
That is, the Secret Agent carried an extraordinary commission from
Washington, answering to a superior, or “control,” named K9. That man in turn might have gotten authority
from the President himself. In contrast
to the usual G-men, the Secret Agent could behave more or less as he saw fit in
battling the criminal element. Someone had to pay for all of his
crime-fighting, of course. So “ten
wealthy, public-spirited men,” the legend relates, had subscribed to a fund in
the name of Elisha Pond. With that money
X equipped a sanctum, the Montgomery Mansion; and he built an arsenal of
armored cars and other gadgets. He
developed explosive and flash grenades, flares, and a series of bulletproof
vests. Then he fashioned that legendary
anesthetizing gas gun, his chief weapon to overcome his opponents.
X faced
some nasty criminal types, most of them seeming escapees from the “weird
menace” pulps. They included Doctor
Marko, the Skull, Thoth, the Fury, the Brain, Shaitan, and Madam Death. I might count the “Leopard Lady,” Felice
Vincart, among this number. But she
wasn’t the main villain in either of her appearances. Since the original novels, some other writers
have added to the Agent’s Rogues’ Gallery, as I myself have done with Proteus,
the Fool, the Ghost, and now, the Resurrectionist.
Tom: With The Resurrection Ring now in print, why
don’t you tell readers a little about the plot, how it came about, and why,
without revealing any crucial secrets to the story. But, of course, with enough
tease to the plot to make them want to read it.
Steve: Here’s the blurb Matt Moring requested for
Pulpfest:
Arsonists
in silver-white garments, animate snowmen, reduce innocent victims and private
property alike to blackened husks. Then armed with strange pistols, the killers
murder a number of crooked industrialists and dope lords. Only then can the
arsonists' chief, the fiendish Resurrectionist, raise the gunshot victims from
the grave! But new life isn't so great, since all of the formerly deceased are
now wild-eyed, twitching addicts, slaves to a mysterious “sugar”!
Can the
Resurrectionist really build his criminal cult by raising the dead and
summoning the Wrath of God on his enemies? Or is his actual goal something more
personal: the real identity of the Man of a Thousand Faces?
To answer
these questions, the brilliant detective and his courageous assistants, a known
criminal among them, must confront an old enemy. He will force the Secret Agent
to face his own shadowy past and to admit that even he might finally have run
out of disguises–and surprises….
So in a
nutshell, that’s the plot of TRR. For years I had toyed with an origin for the
Man of a Thousand Faces. That is, under
what circumstances, exactly, had the Department of Justice declared him dead? Who had helped him execute his daring
plan? And what was its outcome, both for
the detective and for those whom he loved?
My novel aimed to answer those very questions. How simple this sounds!
But telling this narrative challenged me
profoundly, as I reveal in the Afterword.
The tale required a compelling villain, for instance. Surprisingly
enough this problem finally solved itself. In addition, TRR must show the passage of time, or a date sometime after the
final story Yoke of the Crimson Coterie. Only a timeframe from mid-1939 or thereabouts
would enable me to reveal certain new facts about the Agent. After all, such information had heretofore been
secret—and understandably so. Ring would show how his long-ago
decisions, however well-meaning, had created unintended consequences for the
master detective. And my tale needed to
do one thing more. It must preserve the aura of mystery surrounding
the master man-hunter.
Tom: Secret
Agent X had numerous helpers that
appeared throughout the series, and you bring most them into this latest
adventure. Do you have a favorite among his aides, or police officials?
Steve: Betty Dale is my favorite because of her
intelligence and her utter devotion to him and his cause. I will confess,
however, that I would have much preferred a more “Pat Savagesque” portrayal of
Betty. In my view the editors should
have made her a more modern woman and a bit less the “weak” or helpless female
(although I concede that her portrayal reflected some of the dated social norms
of the day). So I’ve tried to render her
in a slightly less sexist light, while keeping her true to the spirit of the
character, if not the literal vision of Chadwick and the others.
I have
soft spots for some of his other aides, brave Jim Hobart and loyal and
intelligent Harvey Bates being two. It’s
a shame that G.T.F.R. removed Jim from the series after 1937 and Bates after The Corpse That Murdered, most likely by
editorial fiat. So I’ve tried to rectify
that situation in my own contributions.
By the way, readers can look for some serious danger to befall Bates,
Hobart, Betty Dale or all of them in the future. Inspector Burks interests me, too, though not
strictly for comic relief purposes. I
will admit that I enjoyed giving him his “comeuppance” at the Agent’s hand! In a future story I would like to use Burks
in a much more serious role, so that we see why the NYPD so deeply respects him—and
why the Agent himself admires this dogged lawman.
