A hundred and two books into the 'Doc Savage' series and Lester Dent is still mixing things up. This one fits a few of his standard approaches, but also takes a very different approach rather often. It isn't the most complex book in the series, but it's impressively complex for a story featuring so few characters, most of them being either agents or double agents, and that it's a spy story at heart is not the only departure from the norm.

The most obvious departure is that Dent exhibits a real sense of humour in 'Mystery Island' and he does it right from the get-go. We start out in a hotel lobby with Monk and Ham bickering like "two tomcats on a fense at midnight". Up on a mezzanine balcony, Doc is ably ignoring them, engrossed in his work, but it's driving Renny batty, so much so that he's already torn out hair by the point he drops a couple of light bulbs down from the balcony to shut them up. Instead, to his horror, it sets off a gun battle! A clerk whose hair is creased by a bullet sits down and calls for "the manager, the police and his mother"; people hide ineffectually under seat cushions and Monk can't hide behind a pillar without sticking out from both sides of it.

The most effective humour arrives in the form of Hester, a phone operator whose voice impresses Monk enough that he asks her for a date. She turns out to be agreeably bubbly and blonde but, in a flash, he's proposed and she's calling him "honey-doodle". After she stows away on a boat to see him, he manages to palm her off on Ham, who also proposes without meaning to. He does that on every date within the first half an hour, it seems, and this is the first time a girl has accepted! She isn't remotely what she seems, of course, and what could have been an embarrassing misstep is a notable highlight of the book. She's described at one point as a "ring-twisted tiger" and that has to be accurate, whatever it means.

Another departure is that we aren't really given enough story early on to warrant a synopsis, as it would inherently constitute spoilers. We're just given that opening scene, which is odd enough to warrant serious investigation, and bounced from one thing to another from there until we arrive at the finalé. We're used to Doc knowing more than everyone else, including us, and finding out as they do, but this time Doc's also kept seriously in the dark for a majority of the novel. That makes this a lot less like the movie serial that you might imagine and more like a hornet's nest like 'The Big Sleep'.

Let it suffice that an island in the Pacific, situated just outside Japanese territory, disappears and nobody has a clue why. Given that a British geologist serves as a prominent character, it seems to be likely to have something to do with geology, but that's the largest hint we get until late in the story. That geologist, by the way, Elvo Sinclair Lively, turns out to be a fan of Johnny's and Johnny is a fan of his, too. They've both published and each has appreciated the other's work, Lively likes Johnny’book on movements with a horizontal component, while Johnny appreciated Lively's on stratigraphy. Doc once saw Lively lecture and comments that Johnny is a hundred years ahead of his time.

If that suggests that we're starting to acknowledge that the Second World War has become large scale enough to warrant a plot that ties to it, Dent does that but keeps politics at a distance. The British are allies but the Japanese are just mentioned without any judgement. Then again, Pearl Harbor was still four months away when this was published in 'Doc Savage Magazine'. I have quite a feeling that things might change a little between August 1941 and early 1942. Here, the war is a convenient way to populate a story with agents and double agents and prompt the near constant breaking of radio apparatus wherever it's found.

It's also a grounding, because all five of Doc's aides take part in this one, having all been brought in by the government to consult on a new fortified zone near Charleston. What this might do isn't particularly explored, but it's notable simply by being mentioned. It doesn't, of course, mean that Dent can't go wild with pulp adventure and there's plenty of that. At one point, Doc fashions one particularly memorable escape by pretending to be shot and eaten by an alligator. At another, an intriguing electrical machine generates an immense electric-blue snake of energy with hairs that are ten or twenty feet long, though it mysteriously turns into a buzzing green snake with whiskers later in the very next chapter.

Dent also has fun expanding the series mythos. There are a couple of new ways to follow people in this one. Doc has developed a new transmitting device that's disguised as a condenser, so drivers fail to notice what it really is. Monk has come up with a new chemical that makes dogs bark. Sure, he planned it to be a joke on Ham, but, after the opening gun battle, he uses it on the mysterious assailants and, with a little outreach, it works well to track them to a particular boat. In a darker sense, Johnny finds himself tortured for knowledge. He's hanged with a non-choking knot and left on tiptoes. It's non-lethal but it does affect him enough to fail at his own catchphrase after Doc is able to free him.

Talking of Doc, Dent continues to humanise him in this book. He's still way ahead of the rest of us and everyone else in the story, but he makes mistakes, even if they're understandable ones. One chilling scene involves him realising that his recent destruction of radio apparatus saved the lives of four of his aides, entirely by accident. He didn't do it for that reason and he wasn't even aware that they were prisoners but, had he not done it, it would be safe to say that the next book would have been very different indeed. No wonder he gets rather nervous for a notable paragraph: "his metallic features were strained now and there was a tense heaviness about his movements."

Other trends are that Doc spends much of his time wearing only shorts, there are a whole slew of personality changes and a lot of stowing away, both of the latter by multiple characters. Hester is prim and proper until she lets rip. Lively is the opposite of his name, lazy as a matter of course but able to perk up when needed and leap into action at the drop of a hat. In other words, he's rather like Mycroft Holmes until it's time to turn into Sherlock.

Dent also treats us to a plethora of sailing terminology. I had no idea that a "bugeye" is a type of boat, typically used in the Chesapeake Bay to dredge oysters. It seemed likely that "bowspit" and "binnacle" and "bobstay chain" are nautical terms too, based entirely from context, but I didn't care to look them up. They merely serve as effective ambience. What I looked up was the "sailor's palm", which is a rawhide glove used by sailors to sew sails, the purpose being to avoid the large needles required being forced into hands.

And so this is an unusual novel that nonetheless checks off all the typical boxes that we've come to expect by this point. We start in a city, even if it isn't New York. There's a beautiful lady who's not what she seems. There are weird scientific gadgets that may or may not explain the mystery at the heart of the story. And we shift location partway through, this time by sea rather than air. There are new toys for the crew and Monk and Ham are at their bickering best. Given all that, it ought to feel like a routine adventure for Doc and his aides, but there's enough unusual here that I may remember this one a lot longer than many of those around it. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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