Literary Theory
Some narrators just can't be trusted. Dorothy Sayers demands fairness from mystery writers - misdirection, yes, but untruths, no. If the narrator tells you that Jones came home at ten o'clock, then this must be true. If you're told that the clock struck ten when Jones came home, that's quite a different matter. (The clock's striking cannot be doubted, but it needn't have been ten o'clock - somebody might have fiddled with it.) (Dorothy Sayers, "Aristotle on Detective Fiction", speech given in Oxford March 5, 1935)
Kenneth Robeson usually plays exceedingly fair by his readers, but there are lapses.
When the narrator - not one of the characters in the story - tells you: "He was an insurance salesman from Washington" (Der Mann vom Mond, German #52 p. 8 [i.e.Devil on the Moon, Bantam #50]), then the guy has to be one or the narrator is unreliable. Well, maybe that is the guy's job, but he is also the book's evil mastermind, which somehow doesn't go with that profession.
Similarly, it is a bit dodgy of the narrator to tell us that one of the characters is thinking that "the green man might well have escaped from an asylum [...] He possibly got his injuries climbing over the fence", when the character damn well knows where the green man comes from and where he got his injuries. (Der Mann vom Mond, German #52 p. 17 [i.e.Devil on the Moon, Bantam #50]). Of course, this is to allay our suspicions that the character in question is not just a humble seller of insurance but, in fact, the book's evil mastermind.
(In the best No-Prize tradition, you can explain that discrepancy by claiming that the character had speculated about what conclusions others might draw from the facts.)
A question arises here. If it looks like an insurance salesman and acts like on and claims to be one - shouldn't the narrator call it one? Whether it is or not? --- Taken further, if it looks like a bush and acts like one - shouldn't the narrator call it one, regardless of what it is? I did so as master in a role-playing game once, where the bush turned out to be some creature. (Had the players investigated the bush, I would have told them that it wasn't a bush after all but something more dangerous.) They were a bit annoyed because I had told them it was a bush, and if you can't trust a master or a narrator, whom can you trust?
The narratically correct solution would have been to say: "You're on top of a hill with grass and a few trees and what looks like a bush. So you want to camp here?" Now, unfortunately, undue attention is drawn to the bush. Strictly speaking, you should say: "You're on top of what looks like a hill with what looks like grass and what looks like a few trees and what looks like a bush." (In some of the more existentialist games I've played you actually would have had to say: "What you think is you, thinks it is on top of what seems to be...")
Still, to some limited extent this is what actually happens in the Doc Savage stories. Whenever Doc masquerades as someone else - as Alexander Mandelbran, a character in The Midas Man, for example -, the experienced reader knows this by the phrases that are used to refer to the masquerading Doc Savage. For over twenty pages, the character is referred to first as "a big and powerful young man with greying temples", then addressed as Alexander Mandelbran by a character (never the narrator); he gives his name as Alexander Mandelbran. From then on it is "the young man", "the man in the overall" and later "the man who had claimed to be Alex Mandelbran" or "the wrong Alex Mandelbran". Only when a character recognizes and addresses him as Doc Savage, the narrator begins to use these words again. (Die Gedankenmaschine, German # 61, p.25-48 [The Midas Man, Bantam #46]) -- As Doc does a lot of masquerading, there are numerous similar passages in the books.
The same is true when Doc imitates voices. Gangsters and heroes are fighting in a darkened room. A voice shouts orders to the criminals, including one not to shoot (at Monk and Ham), and the narrator skilfully avoids having to tell the reader that it is Doc's voice. (Not that the reader's fooled in any way.) (Der Kalte Tod, German #75, p. 57 [Cold Death, Bantam #21])
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