By the time that Alfred Andriola created Kerry Drake in 1943, he was already an accomplished creator of detective strips, such as Charlie Chan and Dan Dunn.
Kerry Drake is an honest detective and his adventures are closely connected to the daily hardships of the police force. He is no super cop, nor is he blessed with the incredible power of deduction that Sherlock Holmes possesses. He stubbornly carries out his work with his old fashion work ethics. An important part of the police work is that he has help from modern technology, described in detail in the strip.
Sometimes help is provided by his beautiful wife Mindy, to whom he remains legally faithful despite the strip being full of striking femme fatales with exciting names such as Pussycat, Ermine etc. The atmosphere in Kerry Drake is rough, violent and the gallery of criminals exciting. They are often characterised by extremely dodgy looks and equally dodgy names such as Fingers, No Face, Shuteye, Metball and more.
Later on, the focus moved to Kerry’s brother Lefty, who ventured into a detective career. As a counterweight to Kerry’s increasing bourgeois respectability, the maverick Lefty ventures into a society marked by teenage rebellion.