Here's another 'Doc Savage' story reprinted in paperback in an omnibus edition. While the first of each tends to be the most substantial, even they seem a little skimpy compared to earlier books in the series that were reprinted on their own. This one has some charm, as we should expect from a returning Lester Dent but it's hardly one of the highlights of the series.

One positive aspect is the character who starts it off. He's Arnold Haatz, a government employee who proves to be much more capable than his equivalents in another novels. That's rather ironic, given that he has a military background and lives in apartment 4F, a nod to military classification where 4-F means that someone is simply invalidated from military service entirely, for reasons of physical, mental or even moral unsuitability. Haatz doesn't seem to fit the first two, so maybe he might fit the third.

We meet Haatz when Smitty knocks on the door of his apartment to assassinate him and he turns the tables on him, rumbling the attempt, getting away alive and then following Smitty in quest of answers. This has something to do with the Millions, who are people. Jerry Million, to his thinking, is "as low as they come", but his sister, Audine Million is a friend. In fact, Smitty's approach to have Haatz open the door to him is by using Audine's name.

After an unusually complex cat and mouse chapter, Haatz reaches out to Doc Savage by phone. This has something to do with a man called Milan Zinn, it seems who used to be blind until Savage went into surgery and restored his sight. Zinn knew things, that he apparently only told two men: Haatz and his boss at the department of the superintendent of prisons, Russel Kinner. It seems as if this is now very dangerous information, hence Doc Savage.

Unfortunately, after talking with Doc, he falls foul of the All-White Elf of the title, who shows up at the Dulles airport in Washington, DC out of the blue with an immediate impact. I can't remember the last time the mysterious bad guy had as much impact as this one on his first appearance. This All-White Elf, who looks exactly like his description, can trigger an intense brightness. It flattens Haatz, who turns weird colours, but also prompts a plane to crash, Monk and Ham to lose all their equilibrium and a whole waiting room of others to believe it's the end of the world.

Dent keeps us busy trying to figure out the back stories of various characters. Our favourite pair of bickering characters whisk Haatz away to a hospital room, where he's eventually murdered, but an array of others continue to be persons of substantial interest to Doc and his aides. Russel Kinner is one, Milan Zinn another and the pair of Millions others, Jerry having been acquitted of a charge of manslaughter at a photographic company but on a technicality, the judge convinced that he was as guilty as sin and happy to say so as he releases him. This is all as complex as it needs to be and does keep us on the hop throughout.

Of course, we're also trying to figure out who the All-White Elf is and how he can generate such an insanely powerful bright light, because the single thing we know going in is that he isn't really an elf; he's a very human villain. Of course, we eventually learn that what he's doing began as a well-intentioned technique to help others that was merely appropriated by the bad guy to do a host of bad things, but I'll let you find out all the details about who and what and why yourself by reading the actual book. The details are here for us to work it out for ourselves, but there's so much going on that we have to focus to notice the right ones.

What I will point out for fans of the series at large is that there are a couple of new Doc universe details that emerge in this book and a surprising twist on an old standard.

One of the former is a clear enhancement of something we already know. Doc holds an honorary commission in the NYPD, so he can get away with doing a lot that mere citizens can't do, entirely on the basis that he can fairly claim to be acting as a cop while he does it. Here, the action mostly takes place in Washington, DC and Dent tells us that he has a commission there too, along with a whole slew of others in "most of the large cities". The other is that, when he introduces himself to the officer in charge of an All-White Elf crime scene, he gets a warm welcome from him, because the police laboratory in the DC force uses methods and processes that Doc designed, to test blood and to efficiently process latent prints.

I tend to expect that sort of thing in 'Doc Savage' novels, even if not in every single one. Those who write them needed to keep him on the move, having new adventures in new places, and what can help him in one won't in another, so there has to be a continual expansion of credentials. The new details about others using his techniques is a welcome one too, but not an unusual one. The twist on an old standard is very unusual and this is possibly the first time it's come up.

We all know, of course, that Ham and Monk bicker at each other constantly even though they're as close as friends can get, on the inside. Their constant rivalry even literally gets the last word here, because, after it's all over, Monk dates Audine Million without telling Ham, so removing his usual opportunity to sabotage a relationship before it begins by telling lies about his friend. However, that bickering rarely extends beyond Monk and Ham. I seem to remember one incident when one of Doc's other aides got fed up of it enough to comment on it, but it didn't go any further.

Here, it absolutely does. The other two aides in play here are Renny and Johnny and the former is theorising on things when Monk shoots him down, calling it typical of a two-year-old's reasoning. That elicits quite the response. Initially, it's just verbal: "Listen, Brother Mayfair, when you start insulting me, just remember, it's not Ham you are riding." Dent suggests here that Monk merely likes annoying people, so argues on. That's when Renny steals his pig, Habeas Corpus, muttering that "When he does find the hog is gone, he'll lay striped eggs." It backfires on him, because the hog bites him and Doc later tells him "You stole him from Monk, so you are stuck with him."

So, there are reasons to like this. It does a lot with a little and keeps us guessing, but it also keeps the series moving forward in ways we expect and ways we don't. However, it doesn't stick much in the memory, even within a month of reading it, so I doubt it's going to resonate much as I continue through the series, unless that single act of Renny's spurs others in future books. I'm interested in finding that out. ~~ Hal C F Astell

For more Doc Savage titles click here