On the strength of having sold only two stories to the legendary Black Mask magazine, Doc Savage creator Lester Dent is today hailed as one of the foremost practitioners of the Hardboiled School of detective fiction fostered by Carroll John Daly, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and others.
But what stories they were! Employing his personal experiences treasure hunting in the Caribbean, Lester created Miami’s boat-dwelling private detective Oscar Sail, a clear forerunner to John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee and Miami Vice’s Sonny Crockett.
This definitive collection brings together both much-anthologized Oscar Sail exploits, as well as a variant draft of “Sail” featuring a strikingly different version of the Florida sleuth.
Also included are related stories featuring similar characters and settings.
Written by Lester Dent; cover by John Drew; illustrations by Arthur Rodman Bowker; introduction by Will Murray
Luck: The Complete Black Mask Cases of Oscar Sail by Lester Dent contains the following stories:
- “Sail”
- “Angelfish”
- “Jungle Impulse”
- “Two Kukulcans”
- “Luck”
- Manuscript Fragments: “Cay,” “Angelfish,” and “Deep”
