Dusk Before the Dawn

Paine L. Winthrop, President of Seaven Seas ship building company, is murdered, his office destroyed by a launched missile. Monk and Ham are in Monk’s lab in the same building, and go to investigate. They are ultimately taken captive by the Silver Death’s Head gang (so named because of their silver costumes). the gang apparently responsible for Winthrop’s murder.

The Silver Death’s Heads gang launches a crime spree in New York City, including the murder of Winthrop, robbing armored cars, banks. etc.. They net over $1 million, but there is a larger conspiracy at work; multiple shipping companies are being acquired under mysterious circumstances, accidents befalling their leaders, and stock transactions worth over a billion.

Doc enters first to save Ham and Monk, then to stop the Silver Death Heads gang, as they try to get him out of their way.

This is the first adventure in the re-read where only Monk and Ham (with a brief appearance by Pat) join Doc. Renny is off working on the dam project in South Africa, which is a large part of the novel Python Isle by Will Murray.

This also makes the first adventure in the re-read where the action stays in NYC (and the NY Harbor).

There is a reappearance (from #4 The Polar Treasure and #10 The Phantom City) and apparent sinking of the Helldiver submarine.

My sortable table of Doc Savage books is here.

• Written by: Lester Dent
• Villain: the mysterious Master in Silver, leader of the Silver Death Heads; his scientist named Ull;
• Doc Gadget: underwater radio, underwater diving apparatus; adjustments to the sub Helldiver to make it squirt black ink underwater;
• Doc Feat: lots of underwater swimming for long lengths of time.;
• Exotic locale: none, except for the New York harbor (and under it) and, of course, NYC.
• By the numbers: originally published October 1934; Bantam #26 (July 1968); Philip Jose Farmer dated July 1934

After eighteen years, the publication of a new Doc Savage novel is finally on the horizon. The Desert Demons, written by Lester Dent and Will Murray writing as Kenneth Robeson, makes its debut in July.

I was privileged to read and review an advanced copy of this novel, thanks to the author. By excellent coincidence, that read happened in between reading Paul Malmont’s fact/fiction novels The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, and The Amazing, The Astounding and The Unknown. These novels depict the life of Lester and Norma Dent, among others, as adventureres, emroiled in tales which resemble their own fiction.

I’ve posted my review of this new Doc Savage on SFSignal.com. An excerpt is below, and I thank Will Murray for trusting me with an advanced copy to review:

Patience. That is a shared characteristic of Doc Savage fans. A forty-two year wait was endured between the 1949 publishing of Up From Earth’s Center (republished by Bantam in 1990) and the 1991 books by Philip Jose Farmer and the next Kenneth Robeson, Will Murray. Seven books were written by Murray, from the notes of Lester Dent, the co-creator of Doc Savage, and published in 1991-93. Then, nothing, except a battle by Will and others to have more Docs published. (more…)

My review of The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont has been posted on SFSignal.

An excerpt:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: The authors of Doc Savage and The Shadow become adventurers as they try to find the ending to a pulp-like mystery in Chinatown and track down H.P. Lovecraft’s murderer.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Strong characterizations of Lester and Norma Dent, Walter Gibson, L. Ron Hubbard and the pulp business in general; draws a fine line between where reality ends and where pulp begins; well interwoven with a story of China just before World War II.
CONS: Would like to have seen more Lovecraft…but that’s a quibble.
BOTTOM LINE:Fantastic re-imagining if you are into the pulps, and a great adventure story even if you are not.

Take a rivalry between Walter Gibson (author/creator of The Shadow and prolific pulp writer) and Lester Dent (author of most of the Doc Savage pulps, a prolific writer in his own right) and give them their own pulp adventure/mystery to solve. Throw in youngsters (at the time) L. Ron Hubbard and Robert Heinlein. Include the death (murder?) of H.P. Lovecraft and intertwine it all with a storyline of the Chinese pre-World War II battles, and you have Malmont’s fascinating The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril.

The adventure begins as the two pulp giants (Dent and Gibson) argue about a story concerning Chinese tong wars in 1909 based in China and New York City’s Chinatown called “The Sweet Flower War”. Both claim it is a real story without an ending, and argue whether it would make good pulp or not. The rivalry and argument lead Dent and his wife Norma to Chinatown to investigate, to try to find the true ending. Gibson, meanwhile, learns of Lovecrafts death, and decides to head to Providence to attend the funeral, shadowed (pun intended) by Hubbard. In Providence, Lovecraft’s Aunt tells Gibson and Hubbard that Lovecraft was indeed murdered. As Dent was pulled to his story, Gibson, the inquisitive writer always seeking a story feels compelled to investigate.

A separate storyline involving Zhang Mei, a Chinese warlord also known as the Dragon of Terror and Peril, is intertwined, and ultimately brings all the storylines and Dent/Gibson together in the end.

Continuing my series documenting a time wasting obsession with Doc Savage at SFSignal.com, today’s entry features a review of Radio Archives 8 CD collection of radio theater. The collection has two Doc Savage stories, Fear Cay and The Thousand Headed Man, as performed by the Variety Arts Radio Theater.

Readers may want to view the previous post Who is Doc Savage? (A Doc Savage Primer).

My Doc Savage book list can be found here.

We are also planning:

• an interview with Doc cover artist Joe DeVito
• an review of the new Docs, as soon as they are available.

My not so secret obsession with Doc Savage comes fully out of the closet (where I keep the books!) with the “Who is Doc Savage? (A Doc Savage Primer)” on SFSignal.com. I’ve read most of the stories as a kid, and am in the midst of a re-read of the series.

The article discusses:

• The Publications
• Doc and his team
• The History and Influence
• Favorite Doc Stories (a selection of a few from the 180+)
• Future Doc Stories (planned new novels by Will Murray from the notes of original author Lester Dent)
• For Further Reading (links to informative sites)

We are also planning:

• a review of the audio CD’s “The Adventures of Doc Savage”
• an interview with Doc cover artist Joe DeVito
• an review of the new Docs, as soon as they are available.

This is the first of the Doc Savage novels penned by Will Murray under the Kenneth Robeson moniker. From a Doc chronological perspective, it is usually placed after Death in Silver (which is referred to in the story).

Diamond smuglers King Hancock and Blackbird Hinton, in their ship the Mighty in the Indian Ocean, see a plane heading toward them. They shoot it down, think it is the authorities, but it ends up being piloted by Tom Franklin, lost over the Indian Ocean several years ago, with a passenger, Queen Lha, who speaks no English. Their plane is patched in damaged places with pure gold, peaking the smugglers interest. Franklin will only say that they are looking for Doc Savage.

Franklin manages to escape, gets to shore in South Africa, and finds that Renny, one of Doc’s aides, is finishing an engineering project there. Realizing that Franklin is close to having Doc Savage in the mix, Blackbird Hinton phones Bull Pizano in NYC to stop Doc from getting the telegram. Bull is a large strong man, and takes out Monk easily (much to Monk’s chagrin) and manages to capture Ham. Doc, just back from the Fortress of Solitude, frees his men, finds out that Renny is now captive, and hops aboard the Zepplin Aeromunde (from The Lost Oasis) to head to South Africa. Bull and gang are aboard as well, and think they have dumped Doc, Monk and Ham into the ocean. But, upon landing, they free Renny, get Franklin and the Queen and hear her story. She is a descendant of Solomon, from the Kingdom of Ophir and speaks ancient Hebrew (which Doc understands a bit)…and now lives on Python Isle. The smugglers are after the treasure of Ophir (hence the gold), and all race to Python Isle. They do have pythons there, and yes, Doc does fight with some of them, but here the spoilers end.

 There are obvious differences between Lester Dent and Will Murray’s writing style, and I found the change refreshing. Mr. Murray added more humor to the Monk and Ham exchanges, more competition amongst the men, and more description of everything, including Doc. I’m looking forward to more of his books in my re-read, and to his new Doc novels.

My sortable table of Doc Savage books is here.

• Written by:Will Murray
• Villain: Bull Pizano, Blackbird Hinton, King Hancock and Taxus on Python Isle
• Doc Gadget: dust that he shoots out the windows of the hotel which allows him to follow the car that took Queen Lha
• Doc Feat: fighting a shark off Python Isle; fighting with Bull, who bests Monk; making the pythons sleep;
• Exotic locale: South Africa, Python Isle and, of course, NYC.
• By the numbers: originally published October 1991; would be Bantam #184 if numbers had kept going; Philip Jose Farmer dated July 1934 (same date as Death in Silver)

This is the 18th story in Street and Smith’s original publishing order.

Doc goes to Maine, at the request of Chelton Raymond. He finds not only an assassin whose bullets vanish and who moves so well through the woods that even Doc cannot track him….but also an old fashioned family feud, between the Snows and the Raymonds. The assassin wears a skeletal mask, and his custom rifle makes a squeaking sound when fired. The Snows and Raymonds have a legend of such a shooter from long ago in their history. Upon his arrival, the Snows attack Doc and his men, thinking they are there to help the Raymonds. Doc encounters the Squeaking Goblin, but cannot capture him. Doc, his men and some of the Raymonds are captured by the Snows and taken to an island; Chelton Raymond escapes, but he is apparently shot, and falls in the water (Doc does not find his body). Doc finds evidence of a mysterious book about a “Black Raymond” in Chelton Raymond’s safe on his boat, but the book is stolen before he can read it.

Doc follows the Snows back to Kentucky, where the Raymond and Snow feud has escalated, and the Squeaking Goblin is there as well. He sends Ham off to investigate or find another copy of the book, while he narrows down the suspect list, and tries to stop the feud while avoiding being killed.

The identity of the Squeaking Goblin was easy to deduce in this story, but other than that it was well written, with a slightly different type of locale and criminal motive than previous ones.

My sortable table of Doc Savage books is here.

• Written by: Lester Dent
• Villain: the Squeaking Goblin
• Doc Gadget: skywriting lamps (not his invention, but pretty sweet); creates a bulletproof shield for himself out of the plane windows
• Doc Feat: again swims and runs while carrying a fair damsel; also does a good job finding and avoiding chemically poisoned spider webs;
• Exotic locale: Maine, the backwoods of Kentucky and, of course, NYC.
• By the numbers: originally published August 1934; Bantam #35 published April 1969; Philip Jose Farmer dated June 1934

This is the 16th story in Street and Smith’s original publishing order and the first one not written entirely by Lester Dent (Harold A. Davis is co-author).

This finishes a sprint of sorts, reading 5 Docs in the last 30 days, so that I can get to the Radio Archives version of the Adventures of Doc Savage (which feature the 17th and 19th books in the series) and review it for SF Signal.

In this story, Doc finally gets to become King. Two warring factions, the current rulers of Calbia (led by the King Dal Le Galbin, his, of course, beautiful daughter the Princess Gusta LeGalbin, and the head of their armies, Captain Flancul) vs. the rebels, led by Conte Conzonac, who fancies himself the King Maker, try to convince Doc to be on their side. The “King Maker” offers Doc the throne if he helps overthrow the current tyrants. A weapon (the current of a scud missile with eyes, pretty scary for 1934) that appears to be in the hands of the royalty pushes Doc’s decision to head to Calbia, to attempt to stop the bloodshed and see who is really behind the development of this weapon.

The trip to Calbia is full of intrigue. First, Long Tom decides not to make the journey to work on a project, an unheard of even (he later shows up, having been secretly instructed by Doc to fly ahead of the team). The team is discovered on a Calbian boat, named as traitors to the crown, and set off in a launch. One of the heat-seeking scud-like missiles finds them, but, of course, they were already out of the launch, waiting to be picked up by Long Tom.

The part of the story in Calbia is marked by Doc and his gang remembering war; part of their origin story is that they all met during WWI. Doc also uses the unique strategy (unique at least so far in these stories) of telling the five men different tasks, but not sharing those tasks in case they are captured while at war. This departure made me wonder if this was Harold Davis voice; they are other differences (Doc at one point tells the Princess she is a “brick”, a large departure from his past personality).

A precursor for the WWII involved stories to come, this was also enjoyable by the science that was explained as the basis for the heat seeking and guide missiles, quite science fiction at the time.

My sortable table of Doc Savage books is here.

• Written by: Lester Dent and Harold A. Davis
• Villain: Muta, Conte Conzonac, the King and Princess of Calbia, Captain Flancul…everyone looks like a villain at first.
• Doc Gadget: a heat emitter in the form of a box with six cooking stoves lit in it, to draw away the heat seeking missles.
• Doc Feat: taking out Renny again, this time disguised as a Calbian mountain man;
• Exotic locale: the Kingdom of Calbia (in the Balkans), the Mediterranean Sea and, of course, NYC.
• By the numbers: originally published June 1934; Bantam #80 published February 1975; Philip Jose Farmer dated July 1931

This is the 15th story in Street and Smith’s original publishing order.

A sleazy mystic named Mahal is checking up on Doc, but doesn’t know that Doc has found him out and is having him followed and bugged by Renny. Renny overhears a conversation with Mahal and Stroam, Mahal’s boss, about trying to stop a man named Ben Lane from getting to Doc for help. Seems that Mr. Lane has discovered something in far Northern Canada that Stroam wants for himself (as always, the identity of Stroam is not revealed until the final pages, but in this instance it was a bit of a surprise). Of course there is a beautiful w0man involved: Midnat D’Avis, a private investigator from Canada hired by Ben Lane. Stroam and Mahal capture Renny, and then Long Tom and Johnny when they come to find Renny. Midnat is taken as well. Doc tracks them with cool shoes that he just had all of his men wear.

One of the enjoyable parts of Lester Dent’s writing is the factual history and science that he integrates into most of the stories, such as this passage where Doc is describing how the shoes work to Monk: (more…)

This is the 14th story in Street and Smith’s original publishing order.

When you have 180+ stories, there are going to be some lemons, and this was certainly one.  The story starts out promising, with the murder of a man in Trapper Lake, Michigan, his only acquaintance killed while seeking out Doc to help figure out what happened to the first. The trail leads to a compound outside of NYC owned by Griswold Rock surrounded by a high wall and covered by electrical lines to keep something in. Griswold Rock had apparently been held captive, his funds from owning a railroad centered in Trapper Lake being used to fund some type of experiment. Flyers that have been sent to every major newspaper in the country stating that “The Monsters are Coming” are a clue that Doc links to the compound.  All of the activity centers around Trapper Lake, so the crew heads there, and soon sees the Monsters, men who are now several times their normal size. The man controlling the Monsters sends them into the not-so-thriving metropolis of Trapper Lake causing destruction and lots of press coverage. Threats are then sent to major cities that the Monsters will be sent their way if they do not cough up some cash. Doc and his men track down the Monsters and their leader, solving the mystery and ending the threat.

No exotic location, no earth-shattering invention or feat. Hoping the next one gets back up the the high level of the previous ones.

My sortable table of Doc Savage books is here.

• Written by: Lester Dent
• Villain: supposed to be Pere Teston, a chemist who experimented with making farm animals large, but the gent controlling the Monsters ends up being the obvious answer;
• Doc Gadget: puts together a portable load speaker;
• Doc Feat: fighting one of the Monsters;
• Exotic locale: MICHIGAN!!!!
• By the numbers: originally published April 1934; Bantam #7 published June 1965; Philip Jose Farmer dated June 1931