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Doc Savage (Bantam) #85
The Boss of Terror
Men by the name of Smith were being knocked off all over town. And they were all killed by lightning - lightning that entered a room without leaving any marks, on a day when there was no lightning...
118 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
4 people are currently reading
90 people want to read
About the author
Kenneth Robeson
918 books134 followersKenneth Robeson was the house name used by Street and Smith Publications as the author of their popular character Doc Savage and later The Avenger. Though most Doc Savage stories were written by the author Lester Dent, there were many others who contributed to the series, including:
William G. Bogart
Evelyn Coulson
Harold A. Davis
Lawrence Donovan
Alan Hathway
W. Ryerson Johnson
Lester Dent is usually considered to be the creator of Doc Savage. In the 1990s Philip José Farmer wrote a new Doc Savage adventure, but it was published under his own name and not by Robeson. Will Murray has since taken up the pseudonym and continued writing Doc Savage books as Robeson.
All 24 of the original stories featuring The Avenger were written by Paul Ernst, using the Robeson house name. In order to encourage sales Kenneth Robeson was credited on the cover of The Avenger magazine as "the creator of Doc Savage" even though Lester Dent had nothing to do with The Avenger series. In the 1970s, when the series was extended with 12 additional novels, Ron Goulart was hired to become Robeson.
William G. Bogart
Evelyn Coulson
Harold A. Davis
Lawrence Donovan
Alan Hathway
W. Ryerson Johnson
Lester Dent is usually considered to be the creator of Doc Savage. In the 1990s Philip José Farmer wrote a new Doc Savage adventure, but it was published under his own name and not by Robeson. Will Murray has since taken up the pseudonym and continued writing Doc Savage books as Robeson.
All 24 of the original stories featuring The Avenger were written by Paul Ernst, using the Robeson house name. In order to encourage sales Kenneth Robeson was credited on the cover of The Avenger magazine as "the creator of Doc Savage" even though Lester Dent had nothing to do with The Avenger series. In the 1970s, when the series was extended with 12 additional novels, Ron Goulart was hired to become Robeson.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 2, 2023
The Boss of Terror is a "Doc Savage" novel by Kenneth Robeson. Kenneth Robeson was the house name Street and Smith Publications used as the author of their popular Doc Savage novels. Though most Doc Savage stories were written by the author Lester Dent, there were many others who contributed to the series, including:
William G. Bogart
Evelyn Coulson
Harold A. Davis
Lawrence Donovan
Alan Hathway
W. Ryerson Johnson
I love reading these old pulp novels from time to time. I read about 80%+ of the Doc Savage novels when I was a teenager but that was a very long time ago. I have been trying to find them again in the Bantam editions I read in my youth. I have found several of them in used bookstores and have bought several from online aftermarket bookstores.
In this one, Doc Savage and his men are in the thick of it again. The action is classic Doc Savage, filled with good old-fashioned adventure and gadgets that always seem to be there when the hero needs them. You can relax and escape for a little while. A good read in the Doc Savage series.
William G. Bogart
Evelyn Coulson
Harold A. Davis
Lawrence Donovan
Alan Hathway
W. Ryerson Johnson
I love reading these old pulp novels from time to time. I read about 80%+ of the Doc Savage novels when I was a teenager but that was a very long time ago. I have been trying to find them again in the Bantam editions I read in my youth. I have found several of them in used bookstores and have bought several from online aftermarket bookstores.
In this one, Doc Savage and his men are in the thick of it again. The action is classic Doc Savage, filled with good old-fashioned adventure and gadgets that always seem to be there when the hero needs them. You can relax and escape for a little while. A good read in the Doc Savage series.
October 1, 2024
I'm rather surprised to find that this novel, originally the lead in the May 1940 issue of 'Doc Savage Magazine', was written by series regular Lester Dent, because it's pretty rough as it gets going. It may just be that the size of the novels was shrinking and Dent took that to mean that the chapters had to be short and the sentences had to follow suit, as indeed they were early on in the series. It's fortunate that the ideas are decent, though, to keep us on board until it warms up.
We start with Ham and Monk, which isn't unusual, but they're right there from the first line, even if they're not named. Only the newest of new readers to the series won't recognise them from the bickering and the transparent descriptions. They're in an ambulance, which Monk is driving quickly through Central Park to catch up with a limousine he promptly crashes into. It's all a work, though, because the big driver who gets out to fight them, only to find himself loaded into the ambulance, is not the same big driver who's let back out at the instructions of the police. It's Doc in disguise, a pretty obvious but still decent start to the book.
Where it gets interesting is chapter two, because it's John R. Smith's limo that Doc drives over to John R. Smith's house, so he can wander around amongst John R. Smith's guests. He ignores the people who tell him he shouldn't be in the house and stops to chat with the electrician who's busy wiring up the moose head hanging on the wall. That's Long Tom, of course, and soon the pair head up to John R. Smith's office to check in with their new boss. Who didn't hire them over the phone and who apparently hasn't even heard of Doc Savage.
Oh, and while they're talking, word arrives that Smith's son Maurice has been murdered there in the very same house. He's apparently been struck by lightning. In his office. On a sunny day. That's enough to get us moving, for sure! The other quirky detail is that John R. Smith is often known as Radiator Smith, at least to the John Smith Club to which he belongs. That's a G. K. Chesterton-like touch to add to a pulp novel and it's a good one, because the next death is Sell 'Em Short Smith, a multi-millionaire who dies in his own office in his own estate while Doc and his primary suspect, a young lady named Annie Spain, are watching from a nearby tree.
Well, I am getting a little ahead of myself here, but it's a busy few chapters and from two to six, I had a wonderful time with this book. What I've missed out is Oxalate Smith, a name with meaning if anyone cared to look it up, who's the first suspect. Doc sees him climbing out of Radiator Smith's house, shimmying down a drainpipe from the third floor, chasing over to Central Park and hurling a bag into a lagoon. Doc retrieves it and it contains the same furniture polish that had been used in Maurice Smith's office, but his explanation seems good and Doc quickly rules him out and sends him home.
Of course, if you believe all that, then you're one of those new readers who didn't recognise Ham and Monk in the opening chapter. This follows the usual formula, right down to the shift in location halfway through, even if this time out they only travel as far as Turpin Corners, Maine, which Dent made up. There's good and bad here, with the bad mostly revolving around how quickly everything moves on. At least Dent sticks with an actual story, instead of whisking us here and there and back again until we don't know which side is up, as William Bogart did in his recent novels.
Dent is happier with fewer locations, moving elsewhere only as needed to keep the story fresh. He was much happier gradually dishing out the next bit of detail to help us get a little closer to who is behind everything, the Boss of Terror as the painfully generic title would have it. By the way, not a single person in this book calls anyone the Boss of Terror. Apparently there wasn't even room for a traditional villain to work the traditional identity concealment trick, even from the henchmen who carry out whatever orders are sent their way. Instead Dent has Long Tom discover who it is, and so bursting that bubble, but for Long Tom to be promptly kidnapped before he can tell us.
I wasn't entirely fond of the reasons behind everything either, though I'm not going to dismiss the device at the heart of it all. Yes, there's a device and the Boss of Terror invented it and you know a particular application of it already, though it wasn't the point. I found it more interesting that the device didn't start out in Maine. "I think he started the work in Europe," one character explains to Doc, "then came back to this country when all that trouble started over there." That trouble, for anyone not paying attention, is World War II, which was in its ninth month when this came out, so it seems a little dismissive to cast it aside that easily.
Anyway, long story short, there are a bunch of problems here and some fans are more accepting of them than others. I'm somewhere in between the extremes. The good, for me, comes from a good use of Doc's methods and gadgets.
There's a point here where Doc fears for Long Tom's life and is able to save him by exploiting a bad newspaper editor's gullibility. That prompts a response from the bad guys who attempt to con Doc into believing that Long Tom has travelled to South America, but that's immediately seen through because of how he and his aides use a particular code whenever they send telegrams. That's been mentioned before but it makes a welcome return for me in this book with more detail added.
On the side of gadgetry, Doc, with his traditional lack of any explanation whatsoever, hands out a jug to each of his men to leave whenever they encounter the enemy. It turns out that Doc has had one of his suspects swallow a mildly radioactive substance that the tiny recording electroscopes in the jugs will notice and record. That's pretty cool.
And that leaves the final positive note, which was Annie Spain. I had an absolute blast enjoying her antics, which include visiting pain onto both Monk, whom she hits with an ashtray, and Ham, whom she knocks out with a wrench. What's more, she insults Monk in the exact style we know well when delivered by Ham and hurls a memorable insult at Long Tom for good measure, describing him to his face as a "mushroom-complexioned shrimp". She's clearly a capable young lady, she's as pretty as you would expect and she's so on the ball that Ham and Monk can't even keep close enough to woo her in their usual inept style. I hope to see her return in future books, though I know that it'll never happen.
And so this ends up being OK. There's a lot of good here, I think, especially early on, but there's a lot of bad too, even if it's far more frequently disappointing than cringeworthy. And much of that has to do with the length. If the novels end up remaining this short, then Dent, along with Bogart and Harold A. Davis and any other co-writers who wander along, are going to have to find a way to adjust accordingly.
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in February 2023:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Voice...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
We start with Ham and Monk, which isn't unusual, but they're right there from the first line, even if they're not named. Only the newest of new readers to the series won't recognise them from the bickering and the transparent descriptions. They're in an ambulance, which Monk is driving quickly through Central Park to catch up with a limousine he promptly crashes into. It's all a work, though, because the big driver who gets out to fight them, only to find himself loaded into the ambulance, is not the same big driver who's let back out at the instructions of the police. It's Doc in disguise, a pretty obvious but still decent start to the book.
Where it gets interesting is chapter two, because it's John R. Smith's limo that Doc drives over to John R. Smith's house, so he can wander around amongst John R. Smith's guests. He ignores the people who tell him he shouldn't be in the house and stops to chat with the electrician who's busy wiring up the moose head hanging on the wall. That's Long Tom, of course, and soon the pair head up to John R. Smith's office to check in with their new boss. Who didn't hire them over the phone and who apparently hasn't even heard of Doc Savage.
Oh, and while they're talking, word arrives that Smith's son Maurice has been murdered there in the very same house. He's apparently been struck by lightning. In his office. On a sunny day. That's enough to get us moving, for sure! The other quirky detail is that John R. Smith is often known as Radiator Smith, at least to the John Smith Club to which he belongs. That's a G. K. Chesterton-like touch to add to a pulp novel and it's a good one, because the next death is Sell 'Em Short Smith, a multi-millionaire who dies in his own office in his own estate while Doc and his primary suspect, a young lady named Annie Spain, are watching from a nearby tree.
Well, I am getting a little ahead of myself here, but it's a busy few chapters and from two to six, I had a wonderful time with this book. What I've missed out is Oxalate Smith, a name with meaning if anyone cared to look it up, who's the first suspect. Doc sees him climbing out of Radiator Smith's house, shimmying down a drainpipe from the third floor, chasing over to Central Park and hurling a bag into a lagoon. Doc retrieves it and it contains the same furniture polish that had been used in Maurice Smith's office, but his explanation seems good and Doc quickly rules him out and sends him home.
Of course, if you believe all that, then you're one of those new readers who didn't recognise Ham and Monk in the opening chapter. This follows the usual formula, right down to the shift in location halfway through, even if this time out they only travel as far as Turpin Corners, Maine, which Dent made up. There's good and bad here, with the bad mostly revolving around how quickly everything moves on. At least Dent sticks with an actual story, instead of whisking us here and there and back again until we don't know which side is up, as William Bogart did in his recent novels.
Dent is happier with fewer locations, moving elsewhere only as needed to keep the story fresh. He was much happier gradually dishing out the next bit of detail to help us get a little closer to who is behind everything, the Boss of Terror as the painfully generic title would have it. By the way, not a single person in this book calls anyone the Boss of Terror. Apparently there wasn't even room for a traditional villain to work the traditional identity concealment trick, even from the henchmen who carry out whatever orders are sent their way. Instead Dent has Long Tom discover who it is, and so bursting that bubble, but for Long Tom to be promptly kidnapped before he can tell us.
I wasn't entirely fond of the reasons behind everything either, though I'm not going to dismiss the device at the heart of it all. Yes, there's a device and the Boss of Terror invented it and you know a particular application of it already, though it wasn't the point. I found it more interesting that the device didn't start out in Maine. "I think he started the work in Europe," one character explains to Doc, "then came back to this country when all that trouble started over there." That trouble, for anyone not paying attention, is World War II, which was in its ninth month when this came out, so it seems a little dismissive to cast it aside that easily.
Anyway, long story short, there are a bunch of problems here and some fans are more accepting of them than others. I'm somewhere in between the extremes. The good, for me, comes from a good use of Doc's methods and gadgets.
There's a point here where Doc fears for Long Tom's life and is able to save him by exploiting a bad newspaper editor's gullibility. That prompts a response from the bad guys who attempt to con Doc into believing that Long Tom has travelled to South America, but that's immediately seen through because of how he and his aides use a particular code whenever they send telegrams. That's been mentioned before but it makes a welcome return for me in this book with more detail added.
On the side of gadgetry, Doc, with his traditional lack of any explanation whatsoever, hands out a jug to each of his men to leave whenever they encounter the enemy. It turns out that Doc has had one of his suspects swallow a mildly radioactive substance that the tiny recording electroscopes in the jugs will notice and record. That's pretty cool.
And that leaves the final positive note, which was Annie Spain. I had an absolute blast enjoying her antics, which include visiting pain onto both Monk, whom she hits with an ashtray, and Ham, whom she knocks out with a wrench. What's more, she insults Monk in the exact style we know well when delivered by Ham and hurls a memorable insult at Long Tom for good measure, describing him to his face as a "mushroom-complexioned shrimp". She's clearly a capable young lady, she's as pretty as you would expect and she's so on the ball that Ham and Monk can't even keep close enough to woo her in their usual inept style. I hope to see her return in future books, though I know that it'll never happen.
And so this ends up being OK. There's a lot of good here, I think, especially early on, but there's a lot of bad too, even if it's far more frequently disappointing than cringeworthy. And much of that has to do with the length. If the novels end up remaining this short, then Dent, along with Bogart and Harold A. Davis and any other co-writers who wander along, are going to have to find a way to adjust accordingly.
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in February 2023:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Voice...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
September 6, 2023
Doc, along with Monk, Ham and Long Tom are on the trail attempting to discover why men are being killed by bolts of lightening. These men are dying despite there being storm clouds around. Some are dying indoors as well. Even more confounding, each of these victims have the last name of Smith.
I loved how the book begins. I found it to be very clever and very unique for the Doc Savage adventures. Hopefully the author continues in this entertaining way of opening the story.
The story starts in New York City but eventually finds its way to the shores of Maine. Rapped up a n all of this is the confusing plot of the beautiful Annie Spain. Is she truly helping or in on the sinister and electrifying plot.
Renny and Johnny are not involved nor mentioned in this adventure.
Written by Lester Dent and published May, 1940.
I loved how the book begins. I found it to be very clever and very unique for the Doc Savage adventures. Hopefully the author continues in this entertaining way of opening the story.
The story starts in New York City but eventually finds its way to the shores of Maine. Rapped up a n all of this is the confusing plot of the beautiful Annie Spain. Is she truly helping or in on the sinister and electrifying plot.
Renny and Johnny are not involved nor mentioned in this adventure.
Written by Lester Dent and published May, 1940.
November 13, 2024
Doc and the guys seemed to have gotten older; The Boss Of Terror had far less “rock-um, sock-um” action and fewer use of Doc’s scientific wizardry as his other adventures. Also, this story takes place mainly in Doc's and the guys’ hometown of New York, however the mystery is solved in Maine. Doc must have read a few Sherlock Holmes stories as he was an eccentric private eye in this one.
The Boss Of Terror wasn’t as exciting as the earlier stories … Doc seemed a little tired … being a crime fighter does take its toll, but he managed to solve the mystery of the demise of the men who were all exceedingly rich, with “Smith” as their surname. ***
The Boss Of Terror wasn’t as exciting as the earlier stories … Doc seemed a little tired … being a crime fighter does take its toll, but he managed to solve the mystery of the demise of the men who were all exceedingly rich, with “Smith” as their surname. ***
August 9, 2023
An evil mastermind is targeting a millionaires' club, where every member is named Smith, and he seems to be able to summon lightening at will.
In order to stop him, Doc and co. will have to travel to the coast of Maine ( before it became a big tourist attraction.)
Fun entry.
Moves at a good clip, bunch of great action scenes, the book's token girl is well written, and gets to do stuff and the banter was chuckle worthy.
The ending is rushed and abrupt, but that's my only grumble.
In order to stop him, Doc and co. will have to travel to the coast of Maine ( before it became a big tourist attraction.)
Fun entry.
Moves at a good clip, bunch of great action scenes, the book's token girl is well written, and gets to do stuff and the banter was chuckle worthy.
The ending is rushed and abrupt, but that's my only grumble.
January 9, 2017
This one opens, unusually, with Doc & Co. already on the case, with a scheme to sneak into a millionaire's house and find out why he called them for help. Only he insists he never called them. And then his son dies of lightning inside a locked room. What's really going on? Fast-moving and entertaining.
January 8, 2021
I've always enjoyed Doc Savage and this one is a good one as well
October 15, 2016
The first Doc Savage story appeared in 1933 and the series ran in pulp and later digest format into 1949. Bantam reprinted the entire series in paperback with wonderful, iconic covers starting in the 1960's. Doc was arguably the first great modern superhero with a rich background, continuity, and mythos. The characterizations were far richer than was common for the pulps; his five associates and their sometimes-auxiliary, Doc's cousin Pat, and the pets Chemistry and Habeas Corpus, all had very distinctive characteristics and their byplay was frequently more entertaining that the current adventure-of-the-month. The settings were also fascinating: Doc's Fortress of Solitude, the Hidalgo Trading Company (which served as a front for his armada of vehicles), and especially the mysterious 86th floor headquarters all became familiar haunts to the reader, and the far-flung adventures took the intrepid band to exotic and richly-described locations all over the world. The adventures were always fast-paced and exciting, from the early apocalyptic world-saving extravaganzas of the early days to the latter scientific-detective style shorter works of the post-World War Two years. There were always a few points that it was difficult to believe along the way, but there were always more ups than downs, and there was never, ever a dull moment. The Doc Savage books have always been my favorite entertainments... I was always, as Johnny would say, superamalgamated!
March 1, 2016
Of all the pulp era heroes few stand out above the crowd, Doc Savage is one of these. With his 5 aides and cousin he adventures across the world. Fighting weird menaces, master criminals and evil scientists Doc and the Fab 5 never let you down for a great read. These stories have all you need; fast paced action, weird mystery, and some humor as the aides spat with each other. My highest recommendation.
January 30, 2017
Every now and then I pick up a Doc Savage novel, more out of nostalgia than anything else. I used to read them a lot in high school. But I find these days I just can't get through them. This one, "The Boss of Terror," I couldn't finish. Too much 1930s-1940s language/slang.
Read
August 4, 2011Read these tales when was about 6-7, remember i enjoyed them not much else.
November 17, 2018
read some time in 1985
April 22, 2016
Good, traditional, Doc Savage. Only three of his associates are included, but that is not unusual.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews