The Best of the Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes: Crunch & Des

Crunch & Des. Crunch & Des were created by Philip Wylie (Hugo Danner, Willis Perkins, Speed Spaulding) and appeared in over 100 stories and story serials in The Saturday Evening Post from 1939 to 1959, beginning with “Widow Voyage” (The Saturday Evening Post, June 10, 1939). Crunch Adams is the captain of the charter boat Poseidon, and with the help of his friend and partner Des Smith takes a variety of men and women fishing off the coast of Florida. Naturally, life is more complicated than that for Crunch & Des, and they have to deal with romantic troubles–they cause problems for their long-suffering wives–as well as troublesome passengers and criminals. It has been reasonably speculated that the Crunch & Des stories were an influence on John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels.