Rex Stout will forever be linked with his immortal creations Nero Wolfe and his Boswell, Archie Goodwin. Stout's tales of the two detectives in the brownstone on West 35th Street rightly cement his place in the canon of American popular fiction. Much less well known is his lost race novel Under the Andes. (The introduction to the 1994 edition, by John McAleer, is illuminating and worth your time if this subject interests you.) Given Stout’s ambivalence[1], if not outright antipathy[2] to science fiction, it is lucky we have such a work outside his chosen genre. (Curiously, my copy categorizes UtA as “Mystery.”)

It is worthy of note that Edgar Rice Burroughs’ At the Earth’s Core came out the same year as UtA. The two men were acquainted. Given the timing, however, neither writer could be accused of influencing the other. But Stout did have influences for his lost race novel. While he may not have thought highly of contemporary sci-fi, he did seem to appreciate Haggard, Verne, Wells, and Conan Doyle, among others.

As might be guessed from a piece of this period, the work is in first person singular. Our narrator is Paul Lamar: wealthy, rational, self-possessed, and commanding. He contrasts with his younger brother, Harry: rash and emotional, the black sheep. Soon we meet Desirée Le Mire. (Note the name “Le Mire.” Perhaps a touch on the nose.) She is described as “...a courtezan among queens and a queen among courtezans...” She is a “...witch and a she-demon, and the most completely fascinating woman in the world.” (Page 7.) Perhaps unsurprisingly I envision her played by Faye Dunaway, taking cues from her role as Milady d’Winter.

Harry is enraptured by Desirée -- an accomplished maneater -- and the two run off together. Paul -- concerned for his family’s reputation -- tracks them down. Since I am primarily concerned here with Rex Stout in his rare role as a writer of outré pulp, I’ll pass over the mundane details of the pursuit (Paul’s joining the two fugitive lovers on a yacht trip south from San Francisco, the leisurely travelogue, the character building, the inception of a potentially tragic love triangle, and other foreshadowing) and jump ahead to the discovery of a cave into which the inhabitants of an Incan city vanished after encountering the conquistadors.

Here the narrative picks up pace. Action and peril build to cliffhanger chapter end after cliffhanger chapter end. Stout must have been a student of serials. He shows the knack of maintaining suspense and the reader’s interest.

Lost in the caverns, our heroes are captured by degenerated Incas. I don’t know if in reality four hundred or so years underground would be sufficient to devolve people into hairy dwarfs, but Stout sells it. I won’t spoil the fun of the narrative: the perils, captures, escapes, desperate battles, subterranean rafting, etc. Read it yourself.

As I read it, I couldn’t help but notice hints of Stout’s influences. H. Rider Haggard is perhaps foremost among them, not only in the character of Desirée (a reflection of Ayesha), but also in other matters such as the underground pillars of blazing oil/gas.[3]

(UtA’s influences may extend out from the novel rather than solely leading into it. A chaotic running battle fought with bronze spears against an endless army of opponents is a perfectly executed action scene, driving and gripping. If Robert E. Howard had studied it, I wouldn't be a bit surprised. But that’s sheer, unsupported speculation on my part.)

A weird tales/pulp fiction event occurs about two-thirds of the way through the story. This development is notable since Stout had played the bizarre stuff pretty straight up to that point. I won’t ruin the surprise. Whether it works or not I’ll leave to the individual reader to decide for himself.

The novel delivers sweeping curves in its character arcs. (I personally found one character’s decision near the end rather disturbing, though plausible and well written, as one would expect.) The character development is, perhaps, the most memorable aspect of UtA. The action, though competent (occasionally even exemplary) seems secondary to Stout. In fact it feels at times repetitive, as if a third or so could be excised from the novel without detriment, though it would take a better eye than mine to find the fracture points and trim the excess. Ultimately the heart of the work is an exercise in Stout’s mastery of character studies.

Which thought brings me to a few criticisms. (I know, I know: what business have I to offer any criticism of Rex Stout? Contumely! Lèse-majesté! I’m going to do it anyway.) Overreliance on luck is not an uncommon crutch of the pulps, but it stands out at points in UtA. Then there is the odd inconsistency that, somewhere around the halfway point, Stout decided his antagonists should be armed after all, despite all the frequent prior assertions that they fought barehanded and probably lacked the technology to fashion weapons. Furthermore there is the late-book indication that he’d simply given up on a quasi-scientific grounding of the narrative. Prior to that, Stout had seemed focused on plausibility. I think that apparent disinterest in ‘sense of wonder’ is the greatest flaw in a novel that is intended as an entry in the lost race genre. It lacks the sheer imaginative power of, say, A. Merrit’s The Moon Pool (1919.)

And yet none of these criticisms detract from the fact that one of America’s greatest twentieth century authors of psychological-based fiction also penned a workmanlike pulp novel. I don’t regret reading it. And next time I pick up an Archie Goodwin-narrated yarn, I’ll have this story in the back of my mind, superimposing fantastic caverns over the streetscapes of New York City.

Ken Lizzi is an attorney and the author of an assortment of short stories and novels, including Under Strange Suns and the Semi-Autos and Sorcery series. When not traveling -- and he'd rather be traveling -- he lives in Oregon with his wife and daughter. He enjoys reading, homebrewing, and visiting new places. He loathes writing about himself in the third person. You can keep up with his nonsense at http://www.kenlizzi.net.

[1] “Peddling the preposterous in fiction is by no means paltry per se. It depends on whether the reader feels himself gagging or whether he swallows it with pleasure.” See John McAleer’s introduction, page vii.

[2] “The characters aren’t real people.” See John McAleer’s introduction, page vii.

[3] (cf. She, Alan Quatermain.)