I'm rather surprised to find that this novel, originally the lead in the May 1940 issue of 'Doc Savage Magazine', was written by series regular Lester Dent, because it's pretty rough as it gets going. It may just be that the size of the novels was shrinking and Dent took that to mean that the chapters had to be short and the sentences had to follow suit, as indeed they were early on in the series. It's fortunate that the ideas are decent, though, to keep us on board until it warms up.

We start with Ham and Monk, which isn't unusual, but they're right there from the first line, even if they're not named. Only the newest of new readers to the series won't recognise them from the bickering and the transparent descriptions. They're in an ambulance, which Monk is driving quickly through Central Park to catch up with a limousine he promptly crashes into. It's all a work, though, because the big driver who gets out to fight them, only to find himself loaded into the ambulance, is not the same big driver who's let back out at the instructions of the police. It's Doc in disguise, a pretty obvious but still decent start to the book.

Where it gets interesting is chapter two, because it's John R. Smith's limo that Doc drives over to John R. Smith's house, so he can wander around amongst John R. Smith's guests. He ignores the people who tell him he shouldn't be in the house and stops to chat with the electrician who's busy wiring up the moose head hanging on the wall. That's Long Tom, of course, and soon the pair head up to John R. Smith's office to check in with their new boss. Who didn't hire them over the phone and who apparently hasn't even heard of Doc Savage.

Oh, and while they're talking, word arrives that Smith's son Maurice has been murdered there in the very same house. He's apparently been struck by lightning. In his office. On a sunny day. That's enough to get us moving, for sure! The other quirky detail is that John R. Smith is often known as Radiator Smith, at least to the John Smith Club to which he belongs. That's a G. K. Chesterton-like touch to add to a pulp novel and it's a good one, because the next death is Sell 'Em Short Smith, a multi-millionaire who dies in his own office in his own estate while Doc and his primary suspect, a young lady named Annie Spain, are watching from a nearby tree.

Well, I am getting a little ahead of myself here, but it's a busy few chapters and from two to six, I had a wonderful time with this book. What I've missed out is Oxalate Smith, a name with meaning if anyone cared to look it up, who's the first suspect. Doc sees him climbing out of Radiator Smith's house, shimmying down a drainpipe from the third floor, chasing over to Central Park and hurling a bag into a lagoon. Doc retrieves it and it contains the same furniture polish that had been used in Maurice Smith's office, but his explanation seems good and Doc quickly rules him out and sends him home.

Of course, if you believe all that, then you're one of those new readers who didn't recognise Ham and Monk in the opening chapter. This follows the usual formula, right down to the shift in location halfway through, even if this time out they only travel as far as Turpin Corners, Maine, which Dent made up. There's good and bad here, with the bad mostly revolving around how quickly everything moves on. At least Dent sticks with an actual story, instead of whisking us here and there and back again until we don't know which side is up, as William Bogart did in his recent novels.

Dent is happier with fewer locations, moving elsewhere only as needed to keep the story fresh. He was much happier gradually dishing out the next bit of detail to help us get a little closer to who is behind everything, the Boss of Terror as the painfully generic title would have it. By the way, not a single person in this book calls anyone the Boss of Terror. Apparently there wasn't even room for a traditional villain to work the traditional identity concealment trick, even from the henchmen who carry out whatever orders are sent their way. Instead Dent has Long Tom discover who it is, and so bursting that bubble, but for Long Tom to be promptly kidnapped before he can tell us.

I wasn't entirely fond of the reasons behind everything either, though I'm not going to dismiss the device at the heart of it all. Yes, there's a device and the Boss of Terror invented it and you know a particular application of it already, though it wasn't the point. I found it more interesting that the device didn't start out in Maine. "I think he started the work in Europe," one character explains to Doc, "then came back to this country when all that trouble started over there." That trouble, for anyone not paying attention, is World War II, which was in its ninth month when this came out, so it seems a little dismissive to cast it aside that easily.

Anyway, long story short, there are a bunch of problems here and some fans are more accepting of them than others. I'm somewhere in between the extremes. The good, for me, comes from a good use of Doc's methods and gadgets.

There's a point here where Doc fears for Long Tom's life and is able to save him by exploiting a bad newspaper editor's gullibility. That prompts a response from the bad guys who attempt to con Doc into believing that Long Tom has travelled to South America, but that's immediately seen through because of how he and his aides use a particular code whenever they send telegrams. That's been mentioned before but it makes a welcome return for me in this book with more detail added.

On the side of gadgetry, Doc, with his traditional lack of any explanation whatsoever, hands out a jug to each of his men to leave whenever they encounter the enemy. It turns out that Doc has had one of his suspects swallow a mildly radioactive substance that the tiny recording electroscopes in the jugs will notice and record. That's pretty cool.

And that leaves the final positive note, which was Annie Spain. I had an absolute blast enjoying her antics, which include visiting pain onto both Monk, whom she hits with an ashtray, and Ham, whom she knocks out with a wrench. What's more, she insults Monk in the exact style we know well when delivered by Ham and hurls a memorable insult at Long Tom for good measure, describing him to his face as a "mushroom-complexioned shrimp". She's clearly a capable young lady, she's as pretty as you would expect and she's so on the ball that Ham and Monk can't even keep close enough to woo her in their usual inept style. I hope to see her return in future books, though I know that it'll never happen.

And so this ends up being OK. There's a lot of good here, I think, especially early on, but there's a lot of bad too, even if it's far more frequently disappointing than cringeworthy. And much of that has to do with the length. If the novels end up remaining this short, then Dent, along with Bogart and Harold A. Davis and any other co-writers who wander along, are going to have to find a way to adjust accordingly. ~~ Hal C F Astell

For more Doc Savage titles click here