Secret Agent X Pulp Review

After Jim Anthony, now to the second series I discovered when I started my recent pulp binge. I actually discovered “Secret Agent X” well before “Jim Anthony - Super Detective” and read it a good while before the latter, too. Yet, I have started with Jim. I will continue with X, who has neither a name, nor a face.

To be honest, I bought the first volume of the series more or less on a whim. I had been going through Airship 27’s “Sherlock Holmes Consultant Detective” series and somehow Amazon brought up “Secret Agent X” for me. The e-books weren’t that expensive and I was trying to fill up my reserves while fighting with a story I finished at the end of October. Since my first and foremost series, the “Knight Agency” has agents aplenty, I thought a look at a pulp agent would be interesting. I was proven right, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought the other four volumes out at the moment.

One of the early things which endeared X to my heart was his flexibility. Unlike Jim Anthony, X has no fixed look. He makes himself look like whatever person he feels like impersonating, from those he uses often, as the philanthropist and the reporter, to those he only uses once, like a mob boss he turns himself into within thirty seconds to escape a car crash. X has no face and no name - or thousands of both. Yet, he has a steady love interest, even though she doesn’t know his true face, either. Betty Dale actually is an interesting person herself (even though I start to wonder why so many pulp story love interests are reporters…).

X works for a secret organisation and is never short on funds - which actually also goes for Jim Anthony, only he inherited his fortune. He also has a network of helpers, even though none of them know his true face, either. Some stories more or less suggest he’s not completely sure of his own identity any longer, either. He never shows his true face to the public, after all.

With X, even seemingly small matters can turn into something world-threatening and serious and, unlike Jim, he also goes into the supernatural territory. There are situations in which he faces an organisation trying to resurrect one of the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft fame. In other situations, he faces perfectly mundane enemies. For pulp heroes, that is actually unusual, most of them either completely stay out of supernatural things (as Jim Anthony or Sherlock Holmes) or they are immersed in them. With X, it’s not completely sure. The most fitting villain X faced in the stories I’ve read so far, at least for me, of course was an aged Fantomas. Two men who can turn themselves into everyone they want to be make for a very interesting confrontation.

X is settled in the 1930s, too, also in New York City, but in a different one, of course. So far, it seems, the heroes of Airship 27 have hardly met (except for Sherlock Holms and Houdini once). His adventures, however, can take him everywhere, even into the Arabian deserts or a Russian fortress.

Every story of X takes a different turn, there are female villains as well as male ones (something which I really approve of). Even though Betty gets to be the Damsel in Distress a lot, she more often than not frees herself and assists X on his quest.

X, who was a fighter pilot in the first World War, tries his best not to kill his enemies, he works with very advanced martial arts techniques and with sleeping gas in various forms, but if he has no other choice, he will kill his enemies. He also doesn’t always feel the need to save them, if they’re unconscious and in a dangerous situation.

This, together with his ‘facelessness,’ sets him apart from quite some other pulp heroes. He is not the tall, dark-haired, grey eyed man (which seems to have been the shortcut for ‘attractive male’ during the golden age of pulp), because he can be any height and have any eye- or hair-colour. He also has quite a strong conscience which guides him away from possible atrocities which others might have committed.

If you’re expecting another James Bond, you will not find what you’re looking for in “Secret Agent X,” but if you like dangerous villains and complex plots and an ever-changing main characters, you will definitely have a great read.