The Blood Countess

The Avenger #33

by Kenneth Robeson, Ron Goulart (AKA)

In South America to question a young girl who has just escaped the Gestapo's clurches, The Avenger finds the area terror-struck by a series of vampire-like killings. People suggest the girl he seeks is involved. Is she a Nazi victim...or a vampire???

The Avenger original adventures appeared between September 1939 and September 1942 in the pulp magazine The Avenger, published by Street and Smith Publications. Five additional short stories were published in Clues Detective magazine (1942–1943), and a sixth novelette in The Shadow magazine in 1943. Newly written adventures were commissioned and published by Warner Brother's Paperback Library from 1973 to 1974. The Avenger was a pulp hero who combined elements of Doc Savage and the Shadow.

Genres: Pulp, Pulp Adventure, Adventure, Fiction

142 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Kenneth 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.

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much like Doc Savage the Avenger fights crime with the help of his aids. While the stories aren't as exciting and world ranging as Doc he is still a great pulp character and read. Very recommended

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume had a pretty good story, with some real oddities. The author, ghost-writer Ron Goulart, felt compelled to make up a non-existent South American country, which blended the names of two real ones with the language of a third. Since the story was based on a real historical thing, which was that there were Nazis who escaped to South America at the end of World War II, and that this story was about them planning for this late in the war, it seemed weird to make up a country. Maybe he was trying to subtly bring up the fact that more than just Argentina was involved in this? If so, it was a bit TOO subtle.
In any case, like with a few of the stories from the original Avengers run, there is a subplot that things from monster movies might be real, but in fact things aren't as they seem. The only part I had trouble with in the story was HOW deeply implanted German agents were, given that one of them seemed to have been implanted in a professional field for which he had little appropriate background, and remained there undetected for years. That seemed very odd.
I'm still not sure why Goulart kept focusing on the Cole Wilson character so much, to the extent of keeping Josh and Rosabel offstage, but in this one he sidelined Nellie as well, other than a few brief scenes. Still, the story was a good one, and worth reading, because it involved a mystery of sorts, and one that the reader could solve, based on the clues in the story.

[Mark Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better Ron Goulart pastiches. Dick Benson goes to "Panazuela" at the request of an invalid underground operative recently escaped from Europe with information about a Rat Line being prepared for Nazis intending to escape justice. But is she also a vampire responsible for a series of blood-drained corpses?

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Avenger, Richard Benson, was one of the greatest pulp crime-fighters. He and his band of associates comprised Justice, Inc., and, armed with keen gadgets, clear genius, stout hearts, good humor, and the force of right set forth from their Bleek Street headquarters to thwart evil, defend goodness, and protect American society. The adventures were published as "by Kenneth Robeson, the creator of Doc Savage," (which may have led to the perception that The Avenger was something of a second-rate Doc), though the originals were actually written by Paul Ernst and then continued by Ron Goulart many years later. Armed with Mike & Ike, a very special knife and gun, Benson was teamed with Mac and Smitty (analogous to Monk and Ham from the Doc Savage series) from the beginning, and then joined by blonde and diminutive Nellie Grey (who could definitely have held her own with Pat Savage or Nita van Slaon) in the second book, Josh and Rosabel Newton, perhaps the best-depicted African-American couple from the era in The Sky Walker, and light-hearted Cole Wilson in the thirteenth adventure. The stories were well-paced and exciting and very well-written for the context of the era. Benson's origin, as recounted in Justice, Inc., the first story, was similar to Bruce Wayne's in that the loss of his family spurred his decision to fight crime; his wealth and physical prowess allowed him to do so. The loss of his wife and daughter resulted in a weird facial
deformity that made his skin lose its pigmentation and left it malleable like wax so that he could reform it and made him "the man of a thousand faces"; the loss of this ability in the thirteenth novel was a downturn in the series. The series continued for a second dozen adventures in the 1940's, and then revived for a third dozen in the 1970's when Warner Books had Goulart continue the series for another dozen volumes after they put out the first two dozen in paperback. It was a fun and thrill-packed intelligent series, more down-to-Earth than the Doc Savage books and much less crazy than The Spider series.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ron Goulart