Dusk Before the Dawn

This is the sixth story originally published by Street and Smith. The Bantam one I have is in great condition, though it is a 5th printing (August 1977, ten years after the 1st Bantam printing).

The Red Skill has, thus far in my re-read, the absolute least exotic locales. Granted, New York City in the 30s and 40s is great, and it is in almost every story. The Arizona desert is less enthralling, although this story and setting does reflect an old western pulp at times.

The western part starts early, with a man named Bandy Stevens getting into a shoot out on a golf course in New York City as he tried to make his way to see Doc Savage. Bandy is carrying a letter from the three owners of a company building a dam in Arizona that they think is being sabotaged; they want to enlist Doc’s help to find who is behind it. But the saboteur has sent folks to ambush Bandy, and they poison him just as he reaches Doc. The ambushers, afraid Doc will follow up on the lead, try to ambush Doc and the gang. They end up kidnapping Monk’s beautiful blond secretary (of course she is), and, after trying to throw Doc off the scent, take her back to Arizona. Doc and his five follow, where they investigate the three owners, the dam and what someone would want to undermine the project, while trying to “save the girl”.

Johnny, always described as gaunt, gets a few good licks in this one, the first time in the series that I can remember him being singled out in action.

My sortable table of Doc Savage books is here.

• Written by: Lester Dent
• Villain: Buttons Zortell (hireling), Nick Clipton (fake name of the man behind the sabotage, obvious early in the story that it is one of the three mine owners)
• Doc Gadget: the gyro plane, of course (does this mean Dent thought up Harriers?)
• Doc Feat: getting out of an avalanche using a rope like Spiderman (they probably took this from Doc!);
• Exotic locale: the Arizona desert
• By the numbers: originally published August, 1933;  Bantam #17 published May 1967; Philip Jose Farmer dated June 1931

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This is the fifth story originally published by Street and Smith. If I remember correctly, this is one of the first ones I purchased back in the late 60s or early 70s. My copy has my name scrawled in it, and the stamp of a Houston book shop on Long Point that is no longer there.

Pirate of the Pacific has, thus far in my re-read, the best “made for movie” plot and action. From the submarine arrival to NYC, on a liner across the Pacific to speed boats, shark battles and machine gun fights, a lot is packed into this short 136 page book.

The story picks up from where the previous story, The Polar Treasure, leaves off, as Doc and his team are returning from the Arctic in a submarine. They are attacked by enemies who have intercepted a request for help to Doc from Juan Mindoro, a politician from the Luzon Union. Avoiding the attacks, Doc rescues his men (who get pinched) and Juan from the men of Tom Too, a man who aims to take over the Luzon Union. Three of Doc’s men get kidnapped (right after he rescues Renny), and Doc follows them on an ocean liner (in interesting disguises) bound for the Luzon Union. They are found out, attacked and imprisoned on the boat. They escape (through a bomb hole with some nifty diving equipment), get to the islands, and end up island hopping, fighting Tom Too’s men, rescuing each other, avoiding sharks and trying to track down Tom Too.

A good passage is included in this story as to why Doc never uses guns (though in some stories he does):

“The reasons I don’t use a gun are largely psychological,” he said. “Put a gun in a man’s hand and he will use it. Let him carry one and he comes to depend on it. Take it away from him, and he is lost - seized with a feeling of helplessness. Therefore, since I carry no firearms, none can be taken from me to leave the resultant feeling of helplessness.”

My sortable table of Doc Savage books is here.

• Written by: Lester Dent
• Villain: Tom Too
• Doc Gadget: underwater breathing hoods, well before the invention of SCUBA;
• Doc Feat: disappears in a fire, wrestles a shark;
• Exotic locale: the Pacific islands of the Luzon Union (Philippines?)
• By the numbers: originally published July, 1933;  Bantam #19 published September 1967; Philip Jose Farmer dated July 1932

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This is the fourth story originally published by Street and Smith.

Lester Dent portrays a perplexed Doc Savage, unlike the other novels. Doc is several times surprised by events, which happens rarely.

In this novel, Victor Vail, a blind violin maestro, is saved from kidnapping by Doc (who incidentally wrote the piece Vail had just been performing). Years ago, Vail had been aboard an ocean liner that had been marooned in the Arctic Ice, losing his wife and daughter. Vail believes a man named Ben O’Gard, a member of the crew, saved him from Keelhaul de Rosa,  who apparently killed the rest of the passengers, looking for gold and diamonds on board.

Doc discovers that a map was tattooed on blind Victor Vail’s back, which shows where the marooned ocean liner is, containing the treasure. Doc and the team go after the treasure, intent on beating Keelhaul to it. They enlist an arctic submarine, whose captain is eventually revealed to be Ben O’Gard (who, as a big man, has some good fights with Renny and Monk). O’Gard is also after the treasure, and as they get to the ocean liner, a fight ensues between Keelhaul (who has enlisted Eskimos to help), O’Gard and Doc and team. Surprisingly, Victor Vail’s wife and daughter are alive, being helped by the Eskimos, and Victor (who I had pegged wrongly at the beginning as the probably bad guy) shows up, sight renewed by Doc’s operation, to be reunited and to assist Doc and the gang win the day and get the loot.

My sortable table of Doc Savage books is here.

• Written by: Lester Dent
• Villain: Ben O’Gard and Keelhaul de Rosa
• Doc Gadget: explosive liquids, hidden in false wisdom teeth, that ignite when mixed together; Monk had some nice ice melting chemicals in this story as well;
• Doc Feat: fought and killed a polar bear barehanded; performed an operation to restore Victor Vails sight;
• Exotic locale: the Arctic ice caps
• By the numbers: originally published June, 1933;  Bantam #4 published April 1965; Philip Jose Farmer dated June 1932

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Philip Jose Farmer has long been one of my favorite authors, with his Riverworld and World of Tiers series ranking high on my list of enjoyable speculative fiction series. The Doc Savage series has also been a long time companion.

Escape from Loki is PJF’s take on Doc Savage at 16, a pilot in World War I, shot down behind enemy lines. He meets Monk and Ham (who are also hiding from the Germans) but is eventually captured, and meets the Baron Colonel von Hessel, who somehow knows Savage is being trained by his father into some kind of “superman” (interesting shades of the German “master race” in the next war). Young Savage escapes, steals a plane and is shot down. While being transported on a train to a secure prison he encounters Renny and Long Tom, who escape by knocking a hole in the side of the train. Doc escapes himself, but is again recaptured. A three-time escapee, he is sentenced to Loki, an “escape-proof” prison, which Doc and his united five companions, of course, escape from.

Farmer’s Doc has many differences from Lester Dent/Kenneth Robeson’s Doc: (more…)

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This is the third story originally published by Street and Smith (and the 3rd, 4th or 5th in the PJF chronology-there are three dated June, 1931).

Lester Dent wrote the majority of the Doc Savage novels starting in 1930’s, long before the Internet, before telephones and TV reached everywhere. I am consistently impressed by the amount of technical and geographical research that Mr. Dent put into these pulp novels. From what I understand, he would work on a skill or trade, master it, then move on to another; and he traveled extensively, earning him entry into the Explorer’s Club.

In this novel, a voodoo master known only as “The Gray Spider” is taking over by force the large lumber companies of Louisiana. Big Eric, a friend of Ham’s from Harvard Law School, owns a lumber company that is next in line, and he and his (of course) lovely daughter Edna fly to New York City to enlist Doc’s aid. The plane is sabotaged on the way, but they survive and Doc and Ham head back to New Orleans with them, with the other four members of Doc’s band of merry men to follow. (more…)

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This is the second story originally published by Street and Smith (and the 2nd in the PJF chronology) and it is a bit rough around the edges. A professor of chemistry, Jerome Coffern, one of Doc Savage’s early teachers and a friend, is brutally murdered, his body dissolved with a strange gas called “the Smoke of Eternity”. Only a forearm wearing a watch that was a gift from Savage remains. Doc follows the assailants, and determines that they work for a man named “Kar”, who is the one who knows had to build the dissolving potion. Doc finds a clue in Coffern’s apartment that he believed someone was trying to kill him, and that a year ago he went on an expidition with Oliver Wording Bittman, a taxidermist, and Gabe Yuder, to a place near New Zealand called Thunder Island. Doc looks up Bittman, and sees a picture of him with Doc’s father, and a letter from Clark Savage Sr. thanking Bittman for saving his life. Doc instantly promises to do whatever he can for Bittman, and Bittman eventually joins in the hunt for Kar (who Doc now believes is Bittman). (more…)

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The very first Doc Savage novel (unless you are counting chronologically the Philip Jose Farmer authored Escape from Loki) is, as it should be, an origin story, showing how Clark Savage, Jr., returning from his Fortress of Solitude and finding his father dead and possibly murdered from a disease called the Red Death, embarks on a mission with his five fellow adventurers to find the legacy his father left him, and to track down his murderer. The trail, including clues left by his father, take him to the Central American country of Hidalgo, to the Valley of the Vanished and a tribe of Mayan Indians. Doc’s father left him legal documents stating that he has a claim there. But Savage has barriers put between him and his destiny by Mayans with red-tipped fingers, the warriors led by a villain masked as Kukulcan, the Feathered Serpent. The Secretary of State of the Republic of Hidalgo tries to deny the claim, but the President, who was sick and healed by Doc’s father, supports Savage. The group heads to the Valley of the Vanished, where the meet with King Chaac and his daughter, the lovely Princess Monja. The warriors with red-tipped fingers try to stop them from learning more from the tribe, and battle/treachery ensues. (more…)

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According to one source, Brand of the Werewolf is the best selling Doc Savage Bantam reprint,selling over 185,000 copies. In the Bantam series, this book marks the  first appearance of Pat Savage, Doc’s cousin, as Doc travels to Canada with his team for some R&R, only to learn of the death and possible murder of his uncle Alex. They encounter El Rabanos, Senor Oveja and his daughter, who believe Doc Savage attempted to kill them. A strange gas knocks some of Doc’s crew out, accompanied by the mark of a werewolf.

Doc and his team follow the trail, which leads to Alex Savage’s land on the coast in Western Canada. In the meantime his cousin Pat Savage and her servant have been captured, with one servant killed. The captors are looking for an ivory cube, that Pat’s father had found and hidden. The cube turns out to have a map of where an old Spanish Galleon, fleeing Panama with treasure and searching for the Northwest Passage,  is buried. (more…)

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The Red Spider stands out in the long list of Dog Savage books for several reasons:

• It was purchased for Doc Savage magazine in 1948, but was not published until this Bantam book in 1979;
• It depicts Savage and his team as working for the U.S. Government, a rarity in the collection of stories;
• There is no clear villain, with the plot mainly being one of espionage and the U.S. vs. Soviet Russia, vs. the normal good vs. evil tone of the other books;
• It contains an excellent Afterword by Doc Savage writer Will Murray, who was responsible for finding this manuscript; the afterword walks through each of the editors that oversaw the Doc Savage magazine, and their influence on the types of stories.

Doc Savage sneaks into Russia, where Monk and Ham have been for several months building their identity and gathering information. They are looking for “the Red Spider”, the one man in the Communist government who Stalin trusts with all of his secrets, and the only man who knows whether Soviet Russia has joined the US as the only power with an atomic bomb. They successfully get the information, but then get in between two different factions of the Soviet government - the one in power, and the one that wants to be by exposing the existence of the Red Spider and turning the rest of the Soviet leadership against Stalin for keeping this secret. Doc, Monk and Ham must escape Russia to get the information back to the United Nations. (more…)

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Superman’s Arctic hideout of the same name may be more well-known; but The Man of Bronze, Doc Savage, has a similar blue domed research facility in the Arctic that predates Superman by 25 years.

In this 23rd book in the Bantam series (other numbering schemes below), John Sunlight (the only Savage nemesis to appear in two novels) stumbles across Doc’s Fortress after escaping from a Russian Siberian labor camp. The Fortress is where Doc Savage would disappear to for weeks, only to return with a new cure or invention. Once John Sunlight figures out how to get into it (by watching the Eskimos who live near it that are trying to protect it for Doc) he finds inside Doc’s labs, and many of the inventions Doc has captured from the villains around the world. (more…)

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