The 159 Doc Savage novels that Dent wrote over 16 years were credited to the house name Kenneth Robeson.

He found out that the starting salary for a telegraph operator was $20 a week more than a bank clerk, so he changed his major to telegraphy.

His first professional sale was an action-adventure story entitled "Pirate Cay"; it appeared in the September 1929 issue of Top Notch magazine.

Ralston had scored a great success with The Shadow magazine, and was interested in developing a second title around a central character.

While Dent was unhappy to later discover that his stories would be published under a house name (Kenneth Robeson), he was happy to receive $500 per novel (which would later increase to $750), and accepted Ralston's offer.

He earned both his amateur radio and pilot license, passed both the electricians' and plumbers' trade exams,[14] and was an avid mountain climber.

He and his wife lived on it for several years, sailing it up and down the eastern seaboard and even doing some sunken-treasure hunting in the Caribbean,[15] then sold it in 1940.

He was elected to membership on November 9, 1936, but was apparently not all that involved in the Club beyond bouncing story ideas off more experienced members.

Doc Savage himself began to shed his superhuman image, and to show a more fallible, human side.

[19] Of the 181 Doc Savage novels published by Street and Smith, 179 were credited to Kenneth Robeson; and all but twenty were written by Dent.

[20] Following his tenure on Doc Savage, Dent found continuing success as a mystery and western writer.

[25] Since his death, Lester Dent has lived on in reprints and new stories discovered and marketed by his literary agent, Will Murray.

[26] In 2009, Hardcase Crime published his noir novel, Honey in His Mouth (written 1956, previously unpublished) to rave reviews.

Altus Press issued The Weird Adventures of the Blond Adder in 2010 and Hell in Boxes: The Exploits of Lynn Lash and Foster Fade in 2012.

The novels describe friendship and rivalry among pulp writers of the 1930s, and also include Walter Gibson, creator of The Shadow.

Moorcock summarizes the formula by suggesting: "split your six-thousand-word story up into four fifteen hundred word parts.