Dwight D. Swain (1915-1992) was an American who wrote in various genres including science fiction.
Drummers of Dauvago has been re-issued by Armchair Fiction in one of their excellent two-novel paperback editions. They’ve put out an enormous number of forgotten pulp science fiction novels and novellas dating from the 1930s through to the early 60s. It’s amazing how much of the obscure pulp stuff really is worth reading. Some of these novels are truly excellent. Most are at least good fun.
Which makes Drummers of Dauvago a bit of a disappointment.
Since it was published in 1943 you won’t be surprised to find that it deals with villainous Nazi plots. It starts with an American intelligence agent named Holcomb convinced that he has spotted the notorious Nazi spy Lubeck in Chicago. That’s impossible, because Lubeck is known to be in Australia. The guy he’s spotted doesn’t even look like Lubeck but Holcomb has no doubt that he’s right in his identification. Lubeck is after all a master of disguise.
Holcomb trails Lubeck but it all ends disastrously, with an American intelligence agent dead and Holcomb facing a murder rap. No-one will believe his fantastic story.
Holcomb realises he’ll have to escape from the cops and single-handedly track down Lubeck and foil his plans. It’s his duty to escape. The fate of America depends on him.
He hooks up with a girl named Sheila. She believes his crazy story and she’s a reporter and she smells a story. Holcomb and Sheila head for Ecuador. That’s where Holcomb’s only lead points. That lead is a shrunken head.
There are the usual elements you expect in a story such as this. Holcomb and Sheila get captured and have to escape, they discover the secret of Lubeck’s evil plans. They also get captured by fierce (and huge) amazon warriors. Holcomb is not giving up. Lubeck must be stopped.
The first problem with this book is that Lubeck’s plan, which is the core of the story, is very silly. It’s not silly in an engagingly goofy fun way, it’s just silly.
The second problem is that the action scenes are pretty poor. Holcomb has lots of narrow escapes but there’s nothing clever about the escapes. There’s no imagination on display. If he gets tied up he just naturally manages to untie himself. If someone points a gun at him he just knocks the gun out of the bad guy’s hand. These scenes don’t generate any real sense of danger or excitement because they’re too straightforward and obvious and, to be honest, boring.
Holcomb is a stock-standard square-jawed hero. The Nazis are stock-standard evil Nazis. Even the amazons are not very interesting. OK, the drums are a nice touch.
It is at least fast-moving. But it’s the kind of story you can read and five minutes after you’ve finished it you’ve forgotten it because there’s nothing memorable about it.
Drummers of Dauvago is just very routine and it’s hard to recommend.
Armchair Fiction have paired this novel with Emmett McDowell’s 1948 novel Citadel of the Green Death (which is a rather interesting story and worth reading).
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