The Sky Devil
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Vic Kennedy is in one hell of a jam. Quick-witted and sharp-tongued with Nicholas Cage's maverick sense of adventure, Vic's flown out of trouble by the skin of his teeth . . . and straight into the jaws of disaster. He chose the wrong side of a rebellion, and now the French have bid him adieu and the British have said off you go. It seems the only place that will have him is Greece. The problem with that is, as soon as the Greeks get him, they plan on giving him a real send offat the gallows. But Vic has a better idea, plotting a course for an oasis in the Sahara . . . where things are looking up. A gorgeous captive princess mistakes Vic for a genieThe Sky Deviland if he gets his wish, well, this Sky Devil will certainly have his day. If he lives to see it. . . .In 1933, when L. Ron Hubbard began his professional writing career, he entered a crowded and competitive field. But he very quickly separated from the pack, making a name for himself as a writer who was both good and fast. So good and fast, in fact, that in 1935 the three stories included in this volume were all published in the same issue of an all-fiction magazine. Fully a quarter of the issue had been written by Hubbardthough readers didn't know it, two of the stories appearing under two different pseudonyms. Also includes the adventures Buckley Plays a Hunch, in which an adventurer seeks to solve the mystery of three castaways who refuse to be rescued, and Medals for Mahoney, the story of man who journeys into the heart of darkness to thwart a murderous conspiracy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This latest resurrection of fiction that defined Hubbard's pulp legacy collects three rip-roaring yarns, all of which appeared in a single issue of adventure magazine Top-Notch in 1935. In the title tale, mercenary American pilot Vic Kennedy touches down in the Algerian Sahara desert and is soon embroiled in intrigues with the locals of lost kingdoms straight out of the Arabian Nights. "Buckley Plays a Hunch" tells of a boat captain who has to figure out why the lost exploratory team he's been sent to recover from the Marianas Islands is strangely reluctant to leave the island where they're stranded. In "Medals for Mahoney," an American soldier of fortune guarding a warehouse on Kamling Island finds himself in the middle of a standoff between a conniving general manager and a tribe of headhunters. All three stories are distinguished by Hubbard's crisp, no-frills prose and his skill at making foreign lands of a bygone era seem both exotic and dangerous for his armchair-traveling readers.