Frederick C. Davis
Frederick C. Davis was responsible for the first twenty Operator 5 stories. However, his pulp writing career had a number of other credits as well. The list included the famous Moon Man series for Ten Detective Aces, a number of long running characters in Dime Detective as well as other Popular Publications magazines as well. He would later move on to hardback fiction. Mr. Davis brought a unique style to the Operator 5 series. These stories had strong plots, plenty of action, consistent dialog, and loose ends always seemed to come to closure by the stories end. Mr. Davis often used factual information as the basis for his stories and often provided detailed footnotes. It has been reported that with careful research, one could even find the original newspaper headlines that had influenced Operator 5 stories.
Mr. Davis' novels also had a number of pertinent warnings and foresight into the future. Whether he is describing a type of weapon with similar characteristics as the neutron bomb, or the nation's risk of dependency on foreign oil supplies, his story lines hold more than enough factual implications to make the plot believable.
What may stand out the most from Davis's Operator 5 series, may be that the characters where very clean cut. Jimmy was always calm, cool, and collected. The family was a tight nit group, and the language and tone was equally clean. This gives some of the stories a G rating feeling, yet, this did not stand in the way of wholesale murder, slaughter, and general all around devastation.
Ultimately, the frantic pace of a novel/invasion every month got to Frederick Davis and he resigned from the Operator 5 series, but continued his pulp writing career for Popular Publications.
Search the Vintage Library