Here's an another King Kong paperback, this time from the mid-seventies when the new Kong film attacked the cinemas.
The novelization was written by one Delos W. Lovelace (the W stands for Wheeler). (I kind of like the first name Delos.) I was beginning to wonder who he was. It seems that he was a husband of playwright and children's novelist Maud Hart Lovelace. They collaborated on some novels, besides which Delos wrote some other novels and plays on his own. He seems to be pretty forgotten these days, were it not for the Kong book.
I just wonder how he came to have the job. He wasn't an adventure novelist and it seems his stuff has been dated (I haven't read the Kong novel myself, so can't really comment).
John C. Snider writes in Scifi Dimensions that Lovelace's style borders on the ridiculous:
"It's true that any popular fiction from seven decades ago will have some odd-sounding vernacular, but many of the turns of phrase in Lovelace's Kong are downright laughable (at one point Denham "ejaculates" instead of shouting)."
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