Talking Toad

During his thirty year career, Lester Dent created several outstanding characters, starting with the immortal Doc Savage, but also including Black Mask's Oscar Sail, Genius Jones, and others. One of the most successful was the Gadget Man, who appeared exclusively in the pages of Street & Smith's Crime Busters magazine between 1937 and 1939. After Doc Savage, the Gadget Man was the longest running Lester Dent series. And, like Doc Savage, it was a mixture of gadgets, mystery and screwball shenanigans. Click Rush is an inventor. But the ingenious crime-fighting gadgets he's invented are not wanted by police agencies, who consider them too outlandish and impractical. Enter Bufa. Who is Bufa? No one knows. Not even Rush. But when a papier-mâché radio transceiver appears in his hotel room sitting on one half of a $10,000 bill and the voice emanating from the toad promises the other half if Rush uses his gadgets to solve a crime, the nearly broke inventor could hardly say no. The problem was that every time Rush solves a mystery, Bufa wants him to do it again. And again, and again. And he won't take no for an answer! Over the course of eighteen screwy stories, the war of wits between the anonymous toad-shaped tormentor and the beleaguered inventor-turned-detective rages. Where will it all end? Not even Bufa knows.... This first volume of Gadget Man stories-most never before reprinted-includes the introductory six stories. Many restored from the original manuscripts. Including a revealing Introduction by Will Murray.