Mark Finn, floor manager, Book People, Austin, Tex.(GALLEY TALK)(Brief article)

Paul Malmont's debut novel, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril (S&S), is ostensibly about the authors who wrote the lurid, sensationalistic pulps of the 1930s, but what makes it so compelling is the way in which it's written. Malmont celebrates pulps by writing pulp, and he spends the whole book deconstructing some of its tropes--and then deftly reassembling them in the final chapters. Malmont plays fair with his real authors, inserting them into his narrative flaws and all, and does not feel the need to add to …