The dude in the white jacket plays two roles: the offensive stereotype, and the revenge of the offensive stereotype.
The Falcon’s Brother (1942) is part of a series of stories concerning a detective named Gaylord Lawrence and his sidekick, Lefty. Gaylord is known as The Falcon to the local New York City police. In this story, Gaylord’s brother, Tom, is returning after a stay in various places in South America.
Intent on meeting Tom at the dock side, Lefty must drag Gaylord away from the various ladies they meet on the way, but once there, they discover the police have cordoned off the ship. Being known to the police, Lawrence and Lefty are permitted to board the ship, where they find the police in Tom’s cabin, having found a body.
After staring at the face of the deceased, Gaylord is overcome with emotion – or so it seems. Exiting the ship, he and Lefty tail one of the women who had been on board and associated with Tom, but eventually Gaylord is sideswiped by a car, and is whisked off to the hospital.
At which point, Tom steps out of the shadows and resumes the investigation. It wasn’t him – and Gaylord knew it.
Bodies start to pile up, and eventually we’re in a little town up the coast, watching as an emissary to an organization of South American countries returns via flying boat – and is targeted by Nazi snipers. Gaylord and Lefty, who has recovered from his coma and sped up to the town following Tom, arrives just in time to take the bullet meant for the emissary, while Tom, captured by the Germans, has been distracting the snipers in an innovative manner.
The plot was nicely twisted, information held back until best revealed, but the characters felt a little bit too much like stock characters (the goofy sidekick, the ridiculously aggressive, yet incompetent, cops), and this is evidenced most strongly in their reactions, or more properly lack thereof, to the heroic death of The Falcon. This lack blunts the impact of the story, so it was not a story I’ll remember for months.
But it was an ok way to pass an hour or so.
