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Kirk, Paul. Paul Kirk was created by Frederick C. Davis (Donald O’Keefe Adams, Bill Brent, Duke Buckland, Carter Cole, Dennis Dayle, Murray Gifford, Cyrus Hatch, Mark Hazzard, Jingling Kid, Guy Kerry, Show-Me McGee, Moon Man, Operator #5, Radigan, Ravenwood, Secrets, Inc., Peter Trapp II, Peter van Dyk) and appeared in six stories in Ten Detective Aces, beginning with “Death’s Last Bargain” (Ten Detective Aces, Feb. 1936).

To the world at large Paul Kirk is a criminal, but that’s not the case. “He was believed to be one of the most notorious criminals in the city, but in reality he was a skilled private detective with offices on Market Street, San Francisco. He had abandoned his real identity, and had assumed the name and personality of his brother, in order to save his twin from certain death.” Peter Kirk’s brother Paul is dying of a lung-eating disease and is destined for the chair, but Peter cut a deal with Commissioner Dermott to spare Paul the chair, and to let him die naturally, if Peter would go undercover as “Paul Kirk” and fight “an evil octopus, with tentacles reaching into every cranny of the metropolis, the crime organization had preyed upon its victims fearless of the police. An executive genius, known only as the Voice, had commanded it—merciless, relentless, omniscient.”

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