Oh joy, another Doc Savage novel written by William G. Bogart. This is his fourth and one more opportunity to get it right, after the gimmicky 'World's Fair Goblin', the promising but underwhelming 'Hex' and the hyperactive 'The Angry Ghost'. Sadly, like 'Hex', it fails to live up to its early potential and, like, 'The Angry Ghost', it never sits still, which is one way to keep us constantly on the hop but also one way to provide a needed grounding.

If you read any random Doc Savage novel prior to these two latest from Bogart and I then asked you to state where it was set, you'd provide a quick answer that's either one or two places, given that the action often shifted halfway. Crucially, if I ran the same experiment with a dozen other friends, they'd all provide the same answer. I don't believe that would be the case with these two Bogarts. With 'The Angry Ghost', there are too many answers and, with 'The Spotted Men', there aren't enough. It's mostly set around Buffalo but it's never actually in Buffalo or any other place we can name, beyond Lake Erie.

At least we know what it's about. The MacGuffin this time is T.3, a new kind of steel that's both stronger and more durable than regular steel and at a much lower weight. It will be a gamechanger to everything from construction to the military, with another nod here to how powerful American's new battleships are; in case that deliberately disguised "little half-baked European country" from 'The Angry Ghost' is reading.

The problem is that we begin the novel with a bunch of tests, risky enough ones that put lives in jeopardy, and they all fail. Tink O'Neil tries out a midget racing car with T.3 steel in its brake drums and rear axle, all of which fall apart when he gets up to speed, in front of J. Henry Mason, the president of one of America's largest steel companies, the one, in fact, that developed T.3. What's more, it's to be tested later that morning in the wings of a new aeroplane, which will be flown by Mason's own daughter, Molly, and Pat Savage.

We don't know why the steel is failing and one frustation I had here is that Bogart never explains it, but the firm implication is that it's being messed with in some fashion. It'll be the gamechanger it promises to be, but only once Doc saves the day and stops whoever is behind the sabotage. That's backed up by a giggling seven-foot-tall giant covered in red spots, who kidnaps the boss while Tink is hidden under the midget race car, then attacks Tink while he's calling Doc Savage. After all, Tink wants to stop the plane test, though he doesn't know at which airfield it'll happen, but he does know that Pat is Doc's cousin.

Things escalate, of course, because they tend to, but in interesting ways, because Bogart seems to be pretty good at setting things into motion. This particular giant isn't the only character afflicted with this particular form of madness, as others at Mason's steel mills succumb, each manifesting red spots, giggling and turning into homicidal (or sometimes suicidal) maniacs, wreaking havoc that threatens the business. There's a neat touch that has Pat receive Monk's message not to take off because of the danger, only to ignore it because she assumes that it's just Doc blocking her fun as usual. And Monk and Ham are buzzed in the air by a mysterious but very fast black plane that spews a black cloud that eats their oxygen. Yes, Bogart knows how to begin.

The problem is that he doesn't know how to end. I can't remember another entry in this series that left so many loose ends dangling. Sure, the bad guy gets his comeuppance, a mandatory last step, but the revelation of his identity is sorely lacking, enough so that I didn't buy it, even though I'd figured it out in chapter two. Sure, we learn the technique by which the spotted men are created, but we don't learn what the affliction actually is. Sure, we learn why such a weird plan is put into place to begin with but not really why an accomplished villain might think it would be a good idea. We don't know a lot here, even after turning the final page. Bogart doesn't seem to know either.

The other problem is that he doesn't know how to get from his capable beginnings to his unsatisfying endings. Like 'The Angry Ghost', he bounces us from one place to another in enough speed that maybe we won't notice the various holes in the plot or just how many of our questions he leaves unanswered. He does exhibit patience in leaving Doc's arrival until chapter five, an approach that's worked well in recent novels, but he doesn't seem to be comfortable with Doc's aides yet.

Pat is highly capable, except when she isn't. Monk is notably capable too, except when he needs to lose a fight to a spotted man, but Ham is just there. The pets are mentioned but always in absentia—they're outside right now—which begs the question as to why they're even mentioned at all. Renny shows up at a point where his presence would be useful but he doesn't contribute anything beyond confirming how amazing the T.3 formula is before we learn that it isn't the T.3 formula after all. Long Tom and Johnny are mentioned only in passing, probably because someone not actually there needed to do something.

The more I think about this book, the more it underlines that point about Bogart setting things up well but then losing control of them. Monk wakes up at one point, chained to a ring in the deck of an oil tanker which is promptly bombed and starts to seriously list; he gets out, of course, but only because Ham notices the key to the chain on the wall. That's cheap. A trio of capable thugs working for the wonderfully named Wart, are described in wonderful detail: they're skinny and tall and share bony faces, "like hungry undertakers viewing the Fountain of Eternal Youth". Boy, do I want to see more of these guys! Nah.

I guess this novel gets from point A to point B, albeit via a dizzying amount of short plane trips, and it certainly impresses early on, but it needed some serious outlining. When you spring something on us in chapter fifteen, it helps to have set us up for it in chapter eight, but Bogart doesn't do that often. He certainly knows how, because he does it with cases Doc secretes in the woods, but he clearly doesn't like the approach. He'd rather get to an impasse and just introduce something new without going back to insert what's needed to telegraph it. And that means that it confuses and it underwhelms and it left me with a lot of questions that are going to remain unanswered forever.

Fortunately, series creator Lester Dent will return next month, April 1940, and he'll write the next three novels. So, hopefully we'll find ourselves back on track when Doc takes on 'The Evil Gnome'! ~~ Hal C F Astell

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