It's 1937, and America is turning to pulp fiction for relief from the Depression. Meet Walter Gibson, the mind behind The Shadow, and his rival for the nation's newsstands, Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage. The mysterious murder of Gibson's friend H. P. Lovecraft is about to bring these two writers face to face with a peril sprung from the pulps. This debut novel is a valentine to an old-fashioned genre as well as a modern, meta-literary examination of the classic hero pulp. From the palaces and battlefields of warlord-plagued China to frozen seas and cursed islands to the labyrinthine alleys and tunnels of lower Manhattan, Dent and Gibson, joined by the young pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard and a host of colorful characters, take part in a heroic journey greater than any story they imagined as they race to stop a madman.--From publisher description.