Newsboy Paul Kelly gets kicked out of where the gang headed by Van Dyke Brooke is plotting their nefarious scheme. On the street, he spots a purse left by a beautiful lady and returns it to her. This convinces ace detective Leo Delaney that Paul is too stupid to steal ..... I mean honest, and he gives him a job as a page. So when Lilian Walker shows up and offers Leo a tip about where the gang is, off he goes.... but Paul recognizes her. Can he save his mentor from the mob?
I was rather taken aback by the drawn-out death that the bad guys had planned for Mr. Delaney. Apparently the "I expect you to die, Mr. Bond!" school of over-elaborate deaths as planned by villains was not new, nor had they learned anything from their predecessors' failures. Oh well. It's a decent but not terribly impressive piece of juvenalia, intended for the audience that was making the transition from Dime Novels to Pulp Novels, with a stopover in the lesser works of the Stratmeyer Syndicate. In a few decades, the comic books would take over this sort of work in America.
I was rather taken aback by the drawn-out death that the bad guys had planned for Mr. Delaney. Apparently the "I expect you to die, Mr. Bond!" school of over-elaborate deaths as planned by villains was not new, nor had they learned anything from their predecessors' failures. Oh well. It's a decent but not terribly impressive piece of juvenalia, intended for the audience that was making the transition from Dime Novels to Pulp Novels, with a stopover in the lesser works of the Stratmeyer Syndicate. In a few decades, the comic books would take over this sort of work in America.
