If the return of Lester Dent as 'Kenneth Robeson' after a couple of months in the hands of the far more inexperienced William G. Bogart might promise a return to the typical Doc Savage stories of earlier years, let me steal that assurance away from you. This is an unusual entry in the series and not for reasons that have really come up before, at least not altogether.

It's a short book for a start, its setup especially unfolding in unusually short chapters, and it's also a notably quick and uncomplicated read. That's not to say that it isn't without its twists and turns, as there are plenty of those, but the chapter with the most happening roughly equates to average chapters in earlier Dent instalments in the series.

It's also far more of a mystery than it is an action adventure, set up through gloriously impossble scenes that would grab any pulp fan's attention. Of course, Doc figures things out long before we do, but he lets his aides in on certain details so that they can help out at just the right moments. And that's most of what any of them do. None get to use any of their specialties, except for minor observations by Johnny; none of them get to use their fists on the bad guys; and none of them are really useful in any substantial way, again except for Johnny, who merely provides a plane when it would be most useful.

There isn't even any of the textbook banter between Ham and Monk, which seems strange indeed. They're hardly even a focal point, even more unusually, though there is a reason why Ham is gone for much of the book. He and Monk are involved, as are Renny and Johnny, though Long Tom does not appear and nobody drops us a reason why. Habeas and Chemistry are absent too and there's no guest slot for Pat. It's mostly Doc, who doesn't explain much and wanders off half the time for his own reasons. Those aides that do appear mostly fail to make much of an impression.

What's more, there aren't many other characters either. The only one who we spend any real time with is Lion Ellison, our focal point from the very first page. She's a female lion tamer who catches the train to Kirksville, Missouri to apply for a job at an apparently well-to-do circus, after being let go from her previous gig because she rebuffed some unwanted sexual advances from a man with a stake in the outfit. She finds that there is no new job either, because the ad she followed was only a way to bring her to town, apparently to hand over her brother's effects. Neddy Ellison died a couple of weeks earlier when his parachute failed to open during work for a flying circus.

Of course, it's not that simple and the second chapter explains why in fantastic fashion. She leaves that appointment with Neddy's stuff, walks over the road to eat at a restaurant, realises that she has lost three days in the process, notices a bloody knife in her purse and sees her own photo on a front page article. Apparently, in her lost days, she murdered the state governor and was caught on film by an amateur photographer during the act. Now there's a $20,000 reward out for her and she's promptly on the run. The only suggestion she can follow is to bring in Doc Savage, as the note from her brother asks her to do.

And so, after a blink of a moment in New York City, we're back off to Missouri, Dent's native state, to investigate, especially given that the wizened old gnome of a man that interviewed Lion was in New York too, attempting to reach Doc. Monk and Renny lock him in a vault of a room, from which he promptly vanishes without a trace. And so it goes, the next impossible scene being the murder of a Kansas City businessman, Ellery P. Dimer, whose throat is slit while he's talking to a room full of respectable people, none of whom see a murderer. The mysteries are strong here and they're capably reinforced.

I rather liked this novel, but it feels a little insubstantial. It's a great setup, of course, in a classic Dent vein, but it doesn't move on the way we expect from him. It shifts around a lot, reminiscent of those two Bogart novels, albeit not so frantically. Nothing much happens, beyond what must to progress the story towards an uncharacteristically damp squib of an ending. It's not inappropriate, given how we get to it, and it plays into the typical application of karma that proves the bad guy's undoing, but it's thoroughly underwhelming.

All the best aspects tie to the mystery, from the initial impossibilities through other creepy facts that Doc and his men uncover. I particularly liked the scene in which the aides search the house of a suspect, while Doc does the heavy lifting of surreptitiously tailing him after his sudden escape. They're still in Missouri at this point, in Kirksville, but Burdo Brockman's letterhead is of a hunting lodge in India, and the photos of him posing next to his big game trophies were not taken in India or with real animals. Everything is off, just as it was for Lion Ellison in the restaurant.

There are a couple of minor details worthy of note to series regulars. Doc records the Lion Ellison interview at headquarters on hardened steel wire using magnetism, a footnote pointing out that this may be the way of the future, replacing needles on wax. Later, when he's attacked not only by one dog, which he can handle, but by three, he tosses out a particular sort of grenade to spread a combination of scents that discourage the attentions of animals. He keeps it right next to his high explosive grenades. I'm glad he doesn't get them mixed up.

And there's a detail I've been waiting for ever since this series run-through reached 1939. Dent not only mentions that there is a war happening on the other side of the pond, but he gives it a name: the 'second great war'. That's new and it only took until April 1940, seven months after war broke out, to get to that point. Later, we discover that the latest victim of whatever superscientific tool the bad guys are wielding will be Prince Axel Gustav something-or-other, who's in the States on an urgent quest to seek American intervention because his neutral European country is "about to be gobbled up by the wolves." Dent seems a little cynical and isolationist here, reflecting a common view of the day.

However enjoyable this book is, it's probably more notable for the things it doesn't do as those it does and for those it does to be a long way from what we expect. I'm going to remember it being a little different a lot longer than I'm going to remember what actually happens. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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