Day Fourteen

4/14

The Book: The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont

ISBN: 978-0-7432-8785-2

Suggested By: Robert Lopez

Where: Home

When: 9:30-10:20p

Music: None

Company: The Family

Pages: 177- 236 (59)

The Lead In: One thing about this book that continues to catch my eye is the consistent reference to actual writers and stories from this time. While I am no expert on the time period or genre, they seem to ring true. It is well-researched and intricately connected.

The 411 on the 55: When the train arrives back in New York, Gibson spots the Chinese Man he called the Shadow. He sends a tail to follow him and later spots him in a newsreel on political developments in China. He eventually meets up with him in an opium bar and proposes that he write his memoirs, just like he did for Al Capone.

Dent, on the other hand, is congratulated by the owner of the Chinese restaurant for helping out and is inducted into a ceremonial fraternity (of sorts), his wife, however, is barred from entering. She is becoming enthralled with a golden statue she saw the night of her attack and discovers that it is a statue of death (or the Chinese equivalent).

Joe Kavalier’s name got dropped today. Neat.

Line of the Day: “It’s about the lie. The big lie. That’s what our audiences want from us, Walter. From you and me they want the big lie. They want the big stories about the great things. Not for us the little tales of simple people. We have to tell the big lie. The bigger the better.” pg 197

The Fact on the Fiction: At their peak of popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, the most successful pulps could sell up to one million copies per issue. Wikipedia