After a poor entry in the series ('The Goblins') and a strong one ('The Secret of the Su'), this wraps up 1943 for 'Doc Savage Magazine' somewhere in between. It's a stripped-down episode, with Ham and Monk leading the way for a while and only Doc present of the regular team. They miss Johnny because both Monk and Ham wish he'd been there to share his knowledge, but neither Renny nor Long Tom is even mentioned. Lester Dent doesn't even tell us why they aren't here.

The story isn't a particularly deep one and however much Dent tried to hurl red herring suspicion at one particular character, there were only ever two real suspects and he wasn't one of them. On the other hand, the revelations are handled very well and there's a lighter tone that I thoroughly appreciated. The setup is ridiculous but in all the best ways and how it developed made me laugh aloud on more than one occasion. Harland Crown Copeland is a character who's easy to hate and I relished each time he got what was coming to him.

And, frankly, that's where we come in, because Wilmore 'Billy' Riggs curses Copeland and it takes. Billy is twenty-four and working at a gas station, but he's already lost two years to Copeland, who had him locked up for theft he claims he didn't commit. Copeland pulls up for a tank of gas—well, technically, his "Negro chauffeur" does, because he's a bigshot who owns most of the town and so has a limousine to show off—and picks on Billy. Billy wears an Indian head charm on his watch that came from his Grandpa Eben and, enraged at Copeland's needling, he rubs the charm and wishes that Grandpa Eben's spook to bring him what's due.

This is a strong introduction because it brings us four crucial characters without seeming to try. It isn't hard to like Billy because he's the archetypal good kid who's had a bad deal. Of course, most of us will automatically root for whoever's getting bullied, especially when it's at the hands of an outright Scrooge like Copeland. Everybody hates him but it's his town so they have to deal. It's an old trope. The third is Ezra Strong, a local business owner, who's also getting gas and has fun with the situation, talking Billy into cursing Copeland more, just for the psychology of it. It'll make him feel better. And, surprising nobody, that Negro chauffeur is Doc Savage in disguise. It's one of his standards.

I wish I could have made a case for five crucial characters, because Grandpa Eben is a character I'd love to have seen in action. He's been dead for thirty years at this point, so he and Billy never met and we're strikingly late to experience his exploits except when people remember them in prose. Billy explains that he won and lost ten fortunes, of at least a million bucks each, eventually losing his life leading an army of adventurers to kidnap a Tibetan lama. The charm depicts the head of a subcontinental Indian rather than a Native American and he claimed it was a "drop of the devil's blood that had frozen".

I want to read his biography, based on that and this section: "Eben is the skeleton in the family closet," said Billy. "He died thirty years ago. He was a great rascal. At one time he was president of a Central American republic, and another time he owned a whole oilfield in Oklahoma, and another time he almost got to be emperor of part of China. The German kaiser offered a reward of a million dollars for his head back in the 1890s." When Billy spills that Eben was typically known as Wildbuck Riggs, even Ham had heard of him.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the curse seems to work. Back at Copeland's factory, he walks into an invisible wall. I don't wish ill on anyone but, given everything Copeland said to Billy and to his chauffeur, I must add that I enjoyed his misfortune immensely. When he finally makes it past the invisible walls and reaches his office, it's to be upbraided by Monk and Ham, which is just as much fun. It seems that Doc's bought into the factory and learned that it's delivering inferior chemicals to the government. Copeland is a crook and a profiteer, skimping in wartime, and they're here to fix that.

The invisible walls seem to show up at random and they don't just affect Copeland. Monk and Ham both encounter them too, as do more and more characters as the story runs on. Monk bloodies his nose. Ham breaks a sword cane. Copeland is almost knocked out trying to run away. Frankly, these invisible walls are one of the best MacGuffins of the series, because they come out of nowhere, in more than one sense of those words, and aren't easy to explain away until the revelations come. I adored them, especially when a quartet of bank robbers use them to get away with fifty thousand of Copeland's factory's payroll, the invisible walls literally stopping bullets in midair and crushing them. That they "accidentally" leave behind Ham's belt as evidence is just icing on the cake.

I'm not sure that Dent was really pushing the comedic angle of this MacGuffin, but I hope he was because it works very well indeed. Sure, it's fun to watch Copeland flounder, until he's murdered a third of the way into the story, but other reactions are joyous too. Ezra, who's suspicious because he spends most of his time laughing, finally gets to experience the invisible walls, which prompts him to shriek like a girl. When the police chief shows up to the Copeland murder scene, he points out that they'll "roll out a new red plush carpet in hell for that old gaffer." It's dark but it's funny.

I can't tell much more because the plot isn't a particularly complex one, but there are a bunch of other characters to introduce. Ezra's fiancée, Lucybelle Nolan, is killed, as well; a death probably tied to the broader story because, before Ezra, she dated Anson Overby, who's Copeland's friend and neighbour. We spend more time with her sister Ruth, who's a brighter character, not a tough chick like many have been of late but calm and collected and, of course, beautiful. That's not a lot of characters and we're really left trying to figure out if the bad guy is Ezra or Anson.

I liked this one. It has a stellar MacGuffin and I can't remember laughing this much at the antics in a 'Doc Savage' novel. However, it's also a skimpy effort with a pared-down plot, too few suspects and not much opportunity to figure out the gimmick. It ends well enough though and I really can't complain that 'The Spook of Grandpa Eben' doesn't include enough Grandpa Eben, given that he's been dead for thirty years before the novel begins. While I'd have relished more Grandpa Eben, I also must acknowledge that including that would have lessened rather than improved the book.

Next up, the second in a trio of glorious titles: 'According to Plan of a One-Eyed Mystic'. After that, 'Death Had Yellow Eyes'. ~~ Hal C F Astell

For Doc Savage titles 1-100 click here here
For Doc Savage titles 101 on click here