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The Avenger #4
The Devil's Horns
A message traced in blood reads "The devil's horns"; a political boss lies paralyzed. The city he controls now in the hands of killers; and The Avenger must decipher the bloody message - or die!
In the roaring heart of the crucible, steel is made. In the raging flame of personal tragedy, men are sometimes forged into something more than human.
It was so with Dick Benson. He had been a man. After the dread loss inflicted on him by an inhuman crime ring, he became a machine of vengeance dedicated to the extermination of all other crime rings.
He turned into the the person we know now: A figure of ice and steel, more pitiless than both; A mechanism of whipcord and flame; A symbol to crooks and killers; A terrible, almost impersonal force, masking chill genius and super normal power behind a face as white and dead as a mask from the grave. Only his pale eyes, like ice in a polar dawn, hint at the deadliness of the scourge the underworld heedlessly invoked against itself when crime's greed turned millionaire adventurer Richard Benson into The Avenger.
In the roaring heart of the crucible, steel is made. In the raging flame of personal tragedy, men are sometimes forged into something more than human.
It was so with Dick Benson. He had been a man. After the dread loss inflicted on him by an inhuman crime ring, he became a machine of vengeance dedicated to the extermination of all other crime rings.
He turned into the the person we know now: A figure of ice and steel, more pitiless than both; A mechanism of whipcord and flame; A symbol to crooks and killers; A terrible, almost impersonal force, masking chill genius and super normal power behind a face as white and dead as a mask from the grave. Only his pale eyes, like ice in a polar dawn, hint at the deadliness of the scourge the underworld heedlessly invoked against itself when crime's greed turned millionaire adventurer Richard Benson into The Avenger.
160 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
3 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Kenneth Robeson
917 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 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 26, 2018
Ashton City has been a hotbed of corruption for years but now the local political boss lies on his deathbed and wants to fix things before he meets his maker. To clean up the town, he calls in Dick Benson, the Avenger himself, and asks him to mete out justice as he sees fit. Benson takes on the task and efficiently assigns the members of his team to infiltrate the various corrupt factions of the town’s leadership and piece together the evidence necessary to bring them to justice. Of course, all is not as it seems, but plenty of perilous adventure ensues.
The fourth book in The Avenger series features Dick Benson and all five of his aides. This is the first novel in the series that hasn’t added an additional member of the team and so, to me, it seems like the series has settled into its norm, at least until everything gets changed again in book #13. The book was first published in 1939 in the pulp magazine, “The Avenger” published by Street & Smith.
This is a good potboiler yarn, fairly typical of the series. Benson maintains his sense of justice, meaning he never acts as judge, jury, and executioner on his own but if the bad guys do themselves in through their own machinations, and die as a result, then justice has been served.
The fourth book in The Avenger series features Dick Benson and all five of his aides. This is the first novel in the series that hasn’t added an additional member of the team and so, to me, it seems like the series has settled into its norm, at least until everything gets changed again in book #13. The book was first published in 1939 in the pulp magazine, “The Avenger” published by Street & Smith.
This is a good potboiler yarn, fairly typical of the series. Benson maintains his sense of justice, meaning he never acts as judge, jury, and executioner on his own but if the bad guys do themselves in through their own machinations, and die as a result, then justice has been served.
April 21, 2020
A city is run by corrupt gangsters, politicians and police and Benson and his aides are called in to stop them. Trouble follows trouble as Smitty is held in a police cell for murder, and the two female aids are locked in a room to be killed. More follows till they are all finally caught in a death trap by the people they are after. Can they escape? Of course, but you'll have to read the book to find out how.
October 4, 2017
Read in the 70s.
December 6, 2022
Popcorn fiction, though the progressive attitudes towards Blacks was refreshing.
December 13, 2015
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.
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.
March 21, 2019
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
November 17, 2018
read some time in 1984
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews