Day Fifteen

4/15

The Book: The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont

ISBN: 978-0-7432-8785-2

Suggested By: Robert Lopez

Where: Home

When: 8:40-9:20p

Music: None

Company: The Family

Pages: 237 - 315 (78)

The Lead In: I guess this thought comes after reading today, but I will use it to preface my writing. This book is good. Really good. It’s fun and I have enjoyed it very much. Today I hit a 10 line stretch where I really disliked the writing. It was weird. It was out of character from the entire rest of the book. It wasn’t witty, it was stilted and bad. If you happen to read this book, you will see it on page 294 and it involves monkeys.

The 411 on the 55: It was a bit of a rush, and rather than looking back into the book to see what happened, I will retell it as it comes to me. Hubbard and Driftwood are drinking and are approached by Lovecraft. He is dying (of course, everyone assumed he was dead) of gas poisoning and is trying to find Gibson. Sadly, Gibson is now in the clutches of his Chinese Shadow, Zhang Mei, and has begun to smoke opium (Yeah, that sentence is funny to me as well). Instead they go to Dent with the whole story and they decide they have to go to the Island were the gas was stored originally.

When they arrive, they discover lots of gas, zombies and a cowboy, Lew. His ship was highjacked and he was left on the island. Returning to New York, they see the ship and it is being loaded with money, stolen (with the aid of the poison gas) from the monetary printing press, by the Chinese, led by Zhang Mei. He has Gibson in tow but is about to kill him. Instead, the crane operator is shot by Lew and the gas erupts in the ship. Many of the Chinese die or become flesh-craving zombies. Zhang Mei escapes.

Dent rescues his writing nemesis, Gibson, and returns him to his apartment, where Gibson apologizes for the story mix up that led to their falling out in the first place. While this is happening, Otis is attacked on the ship full of gas by a rogue Army colonel who has worked to give this gas to the Chinese (to defeat the Japanese), but Lew saves the day again and they leave the colonel to be eaten by zombies. We find that Otis’ real name is Bob Heinlein. 

A lot happened today. Sort all slung together in a big pot of pulp madness. Good stuff though. Well, except for the monkey crap on page 294. Not literally monkey crap, of course.

Line of the Day: “He knew that he was about to die and suddenly all he craved was the sight of one more dawn.” pg 291

The Fact on the Fiction (today you get two!): “Once Manchuria (and neighboring Korea) were fully in their control, around 1930+/-, Japan began pushing into China proper. By 1934 this was a full blown war with huge resources being devoted to the conflict. The war was brutally fought with much slaughter of civilians involved. Gradually it seemed Japan was gaining control of more and more of China and it appeared inevitable that they would eventually conquer the whole country.” WikiAnswers

Eighty years after the guns fell silent [from WWI] the bomb disposal squad from this area [France] is still finding and then defusing or destroying hundreds of tons of unexploded ammunition every year. BBC News