I Read Books: Grey Lensman

Reaching number four in the classic space opera saga. Kimball Kinnison has defeated Helmuth of Boskone, the pirate leader. However this does not end crime in the galaxy; indeed there is evidence that Helmuth was in contact with the “Second Galaxy” aka “Lundmark’s Nebula”.

Kinnison, on the assumption that all crime is being run by Boskone, decides to go undercover to infiltrate the drug trade, which is not only unaffected by the end of Helmuth but expanding. It turns out he’s right. The drug operation was run separately from the piracy*, and takes over the shattered remnants. In between he finds time to investigate the second galaxy (full of Boskonians, although they find the technologically advanced planet of Medea which they bring back with them), hold a scientific conference to create a new super-weapon, the negasphere, and go through the fourth dimension to defeat his old enemies, the Overlords of Delgon.

Kinnison gets quite badly injured (again), so badly in fact that it breaks the fourth wall, with the narrator informing us that Kinnison doesn’t think the readers would like to hear about it. Fortunately there’s a new treatment to the pineal gland that allows him to regenerate the missing body parts,so he’s okay in time for the final battles, and then to ride off into the sunset with Clarissa MacDougall, who he finally accepts is worth marrying despite the risks of death.

I don't think I phrased that right.

Read This: If you are already on board the Lensman train, then this is mostly more of the same – more layers of bad guys, who are worse, bigger spaceships, a larger scale, more elaborate undercover work and some mega weapons.
Don’t Read This: If this sounds like a lot of boring nonsense.

The series so far:

Triplanetary
First Lensman
Galactic Patrol

* Since this was actually a war between “Civilisation” and “Boskonia”, it was actually commerce raiding, so the practise of sending the “pirates” to the death chamber, which led to the bloody no-quarter fights between the Patrol and their enemies, would have been a war crime. I’m just saying.
On the other hand the zwilniks who operate the narcotics rings are actually agents of a foreign power, out of uniform, in wartime, making them traitors, spies, or saboteurs depending, so they can probably be shot out of hand.