SOURCE: "Lester Dent: The Last of Joe Shaw's Black Mask Boys", in Clues: A Journal of Detection, Vol. 2, Fall-Winter, 1981, pp. 128-134.

In the following essay, Murray investigates the publishing history of Dent's two acclaimed short stories, originally published in the Black Mask magazine, "Sail" and "Angelfish."

Lester Dent (1904-1959) enjoys an unusual dual reputation in the mystery field. Under the house name Kenneth Robeson he ground out between 1933 and 1949 over 150 pulp adventure novels featuring his superhuman hero Doc Savage. Under his own name, he was responsible for unnumbered pulp and slick magazine stories, in addition to five well-received, but long out of print, crime novels. Of this group, only two stories, each written a few weeks apart back in 1936, would be reprinted as often as his Doc Savage novels.

These stories were "Sail" and "Angelfish," both of which appeared in Black Mask during its hard-boiled period, in the...