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The Headless Men
Doc Savage #100
by Kenneth Robeson
Bantam #123, 240p
Published: Original June 1941 Bantam December 1984

I have to feel a little satisfaction right now, not only because this is my one hundredth review of a 'Doc Savage' novel, in pulp publication order, but because I'm only three months behind where my target put me. I reviewed the first book in the series, 'The Man of Bronze' in November 2015 and I planned to follow it up with another every month. That schedule means that I should have written this in February instead of May 2024, but that's pretty close, I think, for this particular milestone.

Of course, that also means that it's the one hundredth novel to appear in 'Doc Savage Magazine'. Unfortunately, it's hardly a strong effort to commemorate that milestone, partly because it came from the pen of Alan Hathway rather than series creator and most frequent author, Lester Dent, who had to settle for the three before it and the two after. Hathway didn't do badly in his opening contribution to the series, 'The Devil's Playground' five months earlier, but he slips up a lot here, with two especially bad habits on show.

One is a habit of using outrageously bad names, which is notable in a series that's known for that flaw already. We meet Needlenose Swenson in the first paragraph and learn about his disdain for Prof. Norgrud L. Watts on the first page. We also learn in the first chapter that both work at the Stumpp Electrical Co. in New Jersey, which we soon discover is owned by L. Pennfield Stumpp. We suddenly buy into famous transport flier Wings Dedham and Hollywood starlet Lydia Ladore having entirely believable names, just by comparison. Just wait until we find Gen. Smedley Worthington Watson and his junior associate, Sneedfield.

Another is the gimmick with which he saddles Stumpp. Again, this isn't a flaw unique to Hathway, but I honestly can't remember another single character that annoyed the heck out of me the way that Stumpp does with his singsong rhyming dialogue that generally makes no sense whatsoever. The one positive aspect to this gimmick is that even the other characters in the story hate it too, a reaction most pronounced in Monk, who breaks off from his bickering with Ham occasionally to be frustrated at Stumpp instead. At one point, I wanted to cheer him on:

---

"Omigosh, oh, bigosh, oh, pishtosh!" L. Pennfield moaned in his up-and-down voice. "It was in my pocket... docket... sprocket. Oh, hell!"

L. Pennfield broke down in a sweat. He apparently was sufficiently terrified to speak in a normal tone of voice. Monk drew a sigh of relief.

"Some day," he prophesied, "I'm going to put a cork in that guy's mouth."

---

Other than this, Hathway's setup work seems fair. Swenson is a janitor at Stumpp Electrical and he isn't the only one to believe that Watts is doing strange things there in his laboratory. Needlenose sees something on one particular night that prompts stark horror, enough to run away to seek the assistance of Doc Savage in New York. Wings Dedham, who's apparently in on experiments Watts is performing on drunks, chases him and trips on a periodical Swenson had with him. It carries the name "The Life of Doc Savage" and advertises "some keys to the bronze man's amazing physical and mental development."

He makes it to Doc's headquarters but doesn't get to meet his idol because, as Monk is telling him about their latest guest, he's decapitated. There was no sound and there's no blood, but suddenly Needlenose Swenson has no head. Now, Doc's already become aware of something strange going on at Stumpp Electrical and Long Tom knows Stumpp personally, but Watts's Lab explodes within a couple of chapters and there's no doubt that Doc's going to investigate and those involved have to do everything they can to stop him.

There is some fun to be had here and the concept of headless men is a good one. It was good when Swenson is mysteriously decapitated in Doc's 86th floor headquarters and it's even better when it grows to headless men delivering messages and promptly leaving again. By the time we witness a whole legion of headless men marching into an Incan temple in the Republic of San Roble, it's very much up there with the most enticing of the series. If only Hathway had fashioned an explanation that didn't suck, it would have been perfect. I'm sure it would work in a particular scenario, but it absolutely would not in every instance provided here.

Unfortunately rather than that being an exception, Hathway actually leans into this sort of thing at other points in the story. Monk and Chemistry actually switch places here more than once, the idea old at this point and already unbelievable. That characters actually fall for it is cheap at this point. When Hathway tries to convince us that Monk and Ham have been experimenting with the concept of telepathy enough to be able to bicker at each other entirely through the power of the mind, we have to wonder if he's going to try to sell us the Brooklyn Bridge in the next chapter.

In other words, this one had a lot of potential and Hathway was capable enough a writer to set up a solid story. However, he clearly wasn't supervised enough or edited enough to stay on track. The result is partly frustrating, partly annoying and partly disappointing. I can cut him a little slack in ideas like Stumpp's Electrical Massage Vibrator not dating well in the slightest, because that's on history rather than him, but most of the failures here are clearly his fault. If there had been more successes, I wouldn't have minded so much, but the longer than this book runs on, the more those seem to vanish into nowhere like the heads of the headless men.

And that means that I'm especially looking forward to Lester Dent's return in February 1941 with 'The Green Eagle'. Hathway did a lot of good in 'The Devil's Playground', slipping up his series lore and relying too heavily on gadgets, but setting things up wonderfully and slotting in well with the times in which it was written; appropriately so, given that Hathway was a newspaperman of the old school right out of thirties movies, being best known as the editor of 'Newsday'. Let's see if Dent gets things back on track in July and let's see if Hathway derails them again in September in 'The Mindless Monsters'. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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