March, 1936 Popular Publications
I was under the impression this volume of The Spider was the third part of a trilogy that started with The Mayor Of Hell and continued into Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate, but that doesn’t turn out to be the case. Green Globes Of Death is for the most part self-contained, with only infrequent mentions of those previous two volumes. The volume it is really the sequel to is Prince Of The Red Looters, as it features the return of that one’s main villain: The Fly. This is quite puzzling for Richard “The Spider” Wentworth, as he’s certain he killed the Fly in that previous book – he impaled him in the heart with a rapier and then the Fly fell many stories to his supposed death.
To be honest, the Fly is not one of the more interesting villains in The Spider, at least not to me, but either Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page liked him, or the readers demanded he return. Who knows. To me, the rapier-carrying character in monk’s robes is quite boring when compared to the average Spider villain. Also I don’t know how “Fly” equals a Medieval monk’s robes for a costume. I was thinking the guy would at least have antennae on his costume. But at any rate, as we know from the final moments of the previous book, the Fly is back – and what’s more he has killed the mayor.
This was how Slaves Of The Murder Syndicate ended, and as a reminder the bigger deal here was that Wentworth was notified of the Fly’s return moments before walking down the aisle with long-suffering girlfriend Nita Van Sloan. This was one of the most emotionally-resonate moments in The Spider, as it was Nita herself who told Wentworth to go after the Fly, and to skp the wedding…this after an entire novel in which she’d nagged Wetnworth to stop being the Spider and marry her. So then, one might be under the impression that Green Globes Of Death would open immediately thereafter.
As it turns out, that is not the case. As typical with the series, it opens on an action scene, with Wentworth in his Spider costume (demonic face with fangs and a hunched back) attending a costume ball in the hopes of rooting out the Fly. It’s two weeks after the previous volume, the events of which are not much dwelt upon. As is also typical, a reset has occurred and we’re back to the status quo, and there’s no real pickup on the emotional finale of the previous book. What’s even more curious is that Norvell Page doubles down on the alternate front, this time: the main subplot of Green Globes Of Death concerns Nita hobknobbing with one of the men Wentworth suspects of being the Fly, to the point that Wentworth kicks her out of his home and tells his companions that Nita is no longer their ally!
Wentworth suspects a few men of being the Fly; another recurring schtick of the series being the various red herrings Wentworth busies himself with. But I’m happy to note that Green Globes Of Death throttles back on the endless, arbitrary action scenes of previous books and goes for more of a suspense angle. To be sure, there is quite a bit of action, but this time Page balances it with characterization and plot, and he doesn’t seem to just be coming up with stuff to meet his word count. There’s also a bit more care put into the mystery of who the Fly is – Wentworth is certain he killed the original, so this new one must be an imposter – so for once the outing of the villain’s identity isn’t arbitrarily shoehorned into the climax.
Another cool change is that Nita is becoming more of the “adventuress” that she would be in later volumes, like Satan’s Murder Machines. A recurring motif is that Nita is always abducted by the villain’s people – because everyone and their brother knows that the Spider is really Richard Wentworth – but this time she has a surprise for her would-be captors, blowing one of them away with her own gun. She even makes an action-heroine quip afterwards. Of course, Nita is still abducted, but it’s cool to see the emerging action-heroine characterization for her. But this too picks up from the previous volume’s climax, in which Nita put on the costume of the Spider and went into action with guns blazing.
Nita is saved off-page by a sort of alt-Wentworth, a “criminologist” who is not suspected of being the Spider, per Wentworth’s best friend-worst enemy Commissoner Kirkpatrick. Soon Nita is hanging out with this guy, and there follows “high melodrama” where Wentworth pretends to be outraged that Nita went off with another man, desperately hoping that Nita can see through his charade but spending the rest of the novel afraid that she hasn’t. So there’s a lot of melodramatic stuff here where he will see the two together and feign anger, not sure if the tears in Nita’s eyes are genuine or not, even telling erstwhile butler Jenkyns to mind his own business. As I’ve mentioned before, a reader can easily detect that Richard Wentworth is nuts; there’s an unintentionally(?) humorous part where, after sending Nita off in feigned anger, Wentworth looks at himself in the mirror and starts laughing…and just keeps laughing.
The apocalyptic tones typical of the series are way whittled down here. In fact, I think this was true of the previous Fly yarn. In this one, the Fly’s minions hit the occasional bank and get in shootouts, but there’s none of the “New York is nearly destroyed” catastrophes of earlier books. The titular “green globes” are glass balls that are hurled by the Fly’s men; they contain an acidic gas that essentially melt guts. These things don’t even appear until near the end of the novel, and Page well captures the horror of them when they are hurled at victims during the Fly’s various robberies. Mostly though the Fly does his fighting with a rapier, and there are numerous parts where Wentworth engages the Fly – or another guy he suspects of being the Fly – in a fencing match.
We’re often told that the Fly is the most dangerous, most cunning villain Wentworth has ever faced, but a mere perusal of earlier books will prove that is not true. But hell, Wentworth thinks that of every single villain, every single volume. The Fly also has a greatly reduced force compared to previous villains. Instead of an army, he just has a bunch of random hoods. All of which is to say that Green Globes Of Death operates on a smaller scale than its predecessors…which really isn’t a bad thing, because Page focuses more on internal turmoil than endless action. But the rift with Nita is a little tough to buy after the events of the previous book, in which her devotion to Wentworth was made clear. Then again, this is why Page does a reset each volume, so he doesn’t get bogged down by what came before.
Another plus for Green Globes Of Death is that Wentworth wears his Spider costume a lot more than he usually does; in most books, he’ll appear as the Spider for a scant page or two. This time, though, he is often donning the garb and going out with fangs and hunchback to blow away the bad guys with his dual .45s. That said, he just as often fights without a costume, and Norvell Page once again points out that Commissioner Kirkpatrick is quite aware that Wentworth is really the Spider. Indeed, pretty much everyone knows Wentworth is the Spider, which lends the series a little unintentional camp value…as if everyone is going along with Wentworth’s charade that he’s just a wealthy gadabout.
An interesting thing I wanted to note – there’s a part early on where Wentworth acquires the palmprint of a man he suspects might be the Fly. Wentworth has a cast made of the palmprint, even though we are informed crime labs haven’t yet been able to figure out how to use palmprints to identify a suspect. Ultimately Wentworth is able to use it to prove an identification, but it was cool to see how novel this technique was in 1936. Years ago I cut my cable, and if you cut cable and get a digital antenna you automatically become an armchair homicide investigator. This is because there are about ten thousand true crime networks on over-the-air television. I’ve seen several episodes of Forensic Files, for example, which hinged around identifying someone by a palmprint. I could only imagine how much better the show would be if, instead of a cop or a crime-lab technician relaying the story, it was a millionaire playboy “criminologist” in cape and fangs. “I knew he was The Fly!”
Despite the more smallscale setup, Green Globes Of Death really entertained me, and kept my attention more than the average Spider novel, mostly because everything flowed so well in the story. Norvell Page this time does a great job juggling action, character, and introspection; the only setback is the villain, but Page does pull a cool surprise twist at the end concerning the Fly that has a horror vibe. It just happens so quickly that the reader doesn’t have sufficient time to realize it, meaning that Wentworth must exposit everything for us in the final paragraphs. The “rift” with Nita is also unsatisfactorily resolved in some quick, expository dialog, but still, overall Green Globes Of Death was one of my favorite Spider yarns yet.
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