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Doc Savage (Bantam) #86
The Angry Ghost
The mysterious menace came out of nowhere to strike along the Atlantic coast. In its wake, buildings, planes and bridges crumbled. The government was worried -- soon there would be widespread panic. The Man of Bronze leaped into action to unmask the villain and expose his cunning treachery.
128 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1940
96 people want to read
About the author
Kenneth Robeson
915 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 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 2, 2024
While every Doc Savage novel in the original pulp series (and almost all since) was credited to Kenneth Robeson, that was a house name. Kenneth Robeson only existed in the form of other authors who took the name when writing for either Doc Savage or the Avenger. Initially, Lester Dent was the only author, writing all ten Doc Savage novels in 1933 and all but one of the dozen in 1934. However, that pace is not an easy one to maintain and other authors gradually came in to help. In 1935, there were five of those, but Dent still wrote six novels and met that target or higher in every succeeding year. Until 1940.
He kicked off 1940 with 'The Other World', but he only wrote five of Doc's adventures that year and so did William G. Bogart—in case you care, the other two were by Harold A. Davis. The reason I mention it is because Dent was massively established in the series, the writer of the majority of the 84 novels thus far, and Bogart wasn't. He debuted with 'World's Fair Goblin' in April 1939, which was mostly a gimmick, and followed up with the underwhelming 'Hex' in November of that year, which felt like a 'Scooby-Doo' episode. This was Bogart's first opportunity to write two in a row and it has to be said that it wasn't an opportunity he lived up to.
It's a superscience story, which works for me, the MacGuffin of the piece being what the papers end up calling the angry ghost of the title. It's a mysterious weapon that turns immensely solid things to dust, things like the anti-aircraft gun installations at Fort Atlantic reported in chapter two. They're new and they're made of concrete and steel, but one shaky experience with the angry ghost later and they have no integrity left. Touch them—or kick them, as Doc does a supporting beam in the corner of his HQ that finds itself targeted by the angry ghost—and they crumble into nothing.
You will be shocked, I know, to find that there's also a beautiful girl. This time out, she's Annabel Lynn, the first character we meet, who encounters the angry ghost on Rockaway Beach. She tries to reach Doc by phone and then in person, but she's blocked at every effort. She's very capable though, as evidenced by her clever escape from a fake Ham. However, when she finally does meet the real Ham, with Monk in tow, of course, she only tells them that she wants to meet somewhere else. And we're off and running, almost literally, because this is such a restless novel that it just can't stay put for long.
Technically, that began in chapter one, because Annabel was in New York then but the two men chasing her then and the ones who kidnap her in chapter two prompt her to catch a train to Washington, DC, in which she tracks down Ham and Monk, who don't even get much of an opportunity to insult each other before she vanishes again. Doc shows up in chapter five, in New York, but he quickly flies to Washington and is brought down in Maryland. They're all back in New York in chapter eight but not for long because the story will take them to Connecticut, Massachusetts and eventually Maine, via a brief sojourn up to 30,000 feet in a stratosphere plane. It's a little dizzying.
What Bogart does well is to have his supporting characters play with our minds. Annabel Lynn may well be an innocent young thing caught up in a nightmare, but she seems too capable to be merely another feisty young thing for Ham and Monk to compete over. Her friend Warren Allen seems suspicious too, a nice guy with an uncanny habit of being in the right place at the right time. And there's Nanny Hanks, a homely middle-aged lady who constantly seems to be incredibly well-informed but who also has a talent for vanishing at the drop of a hat. What makes her most fun is how she manifests a crush on Monk, who wants nothing to do with her. Each of these characters could be a good guy or a bad guy and Bogart has enough red herrings littered throughout his story to keep us guessing.
What he doesn't do well is keep us focused, though I have a sneaking suspicion that shifting the action from city to city every ten minutes was his plan all along, just to disorient us. We certainly can't accuse him of skimping on fights or twists or revelations. He gets his fair share of destruction in too, knocking out military installations across the northeast, plus yet another one of Doc's planes. What's more, he has the angry ghost destroy a corner of the Treasury Building in New York and a corner of Doc's lab at HQ, including all the expensive equipment contained therein.
It's a neat weapon, especially when introduced at such an important moment in history. After all, this was 1940. World War II was already underway, though the United States wasn't yet part of the fight. I'd watched throughout to see how real life events in Europe throughout the thirties might have affected the series but started paying close attention during the 1939 novels to see if mention would be made. It took a while for the series to even acknowledge the existence of something going on in Europe. In fact, stories started to shift elsewhere so that they couldn't possibly be misinterpreted.
At this point, I'd say that there's an acknowledgement but it's cloaked so that, while the good guys are British, the villains are from a "little half-baked European country" without any mention of which one. What's most telling is that everything revolves around a threat to American military infrastructure, so the messages are that it exists and that it should be protected. There's even one very telling line about
"surprise weapons we're saving for anybody foolish enough to force this country into a war." Dent may not have gone there, but Bogart was flexing his chest and saying, don't try anything with America, you little half-baked European country, you.
Oddly, he didn't play the land of superheroes card, except as an implicit undercurrent. It's the surprise weapons that will save America, even though the only weapons we see here are disintegrated by little effort and the War Department doesn't trust Doc Savage enough to let him help them. Of course, Doc saves the day anyway and refuses to take any credit, but that's not the point, unless we're calling him a surprise weapon now. He certainly does an impressive job here, while everyone else plays second fiddle to a strong degree. Renny and Long Tom spend most of their time as prisoners. Monk and Ham have an unequal amount of success in fights but don't really make much difference in the grand scheme of it all.
What's more, the new little details we're told about here are Doc's work too. The stratosphere plane is an Army aircraft but it was built to Doc's specifications. When Ham and Monk are tied up and left to rot at one point, it's the cigar in Monk's pocket that enables them to escape. Crush it underfoot and it will secrete a chemical that rots ropes. That's an invention of Doc's not Monk's, even though he's a chemist and that would have been a great opportunity to bolster his scientific chops. Long Tom and Renny are in town because they've been working with Doc at the warehouse on a new diving bell he's perfecting, but it's clear that it's his project and they're just the help, even though Renny could have contributed some of his engineering skill.
The other new detail is handled by Doc, solo too. That's the hundred-foot mooring mast that sits on top of the famously unnamed building that features HQ as its 86th floor. Doc has that stuffed with gadgets to monitor their surroundings, right down to aircraft defense listening equipment. By the way, he gets up there via a narrow stairway that's concealed in the walls of his headquarters. There's plenty of stuff hidden in those walls, it seems, and we're still finding out about some of it.
What all this means is that there is progression here, from a series standpoint, but that's arguably its biggest draw. The story isn't particularly ambitious. The characters are few but worthy, because they're all drawn cryptically enough to matter. And, superscience MacGuffin aside, everything is acutely down to earth. What I took away most was how much of the novel was taken up by travel, with Doc and/or his aides—as well as many of the other characters—shift from here to there and back again with annoying frequency. If it's chapter six, this must be Washington, DC. And New York. And Maryland.
So it's about the progression for me. While the series wasn't yet ready to join the war, America wasn't either. However, there are hints here that the writers weren't unaware of the threat and the potential for their proudly neutral nation to end up involved. Of course, now we've got to this point, I'm eager to see when it escalates to the next level, because it has to. We're surely not going to be following Doc to lost worlds and hidden civilisations when American soldiers are dying overseas. But when will that shift happen? Inquiring minds want to know. Watch this space...
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in November 2022:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Voice...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
He kicked off 1940 with 'The Other World', but he only wrote five of Doc's adventures that year and so did William G. Bogart—in case you care, the other two were by Harold A. Davis. The reason I mention it is because Dent was massively established in the series, the writer of the majority of the 84 novels thus far, and Bogart wasn't. He debuted with 'World's Fair Goblin' in April 1939, which was mostly a gimmick, and followed up with the underwhelming 'Hex' in November of that year, which felt like a 'Scooby-Doo' episode. This was Bogart's first opportunity to write two in a row and it has to be said that it wasn't an opportunity he lived up to.
It's a superscience story, which works for me, the MacGuffin of the piece being what the papers end up calling the angry ghost of the title. It's a mysterious weapon that turns immensely solid things to dust, things like the anti-aircraft gun installations at Fort Atlantic reported in chapter two. They're new and they're made of concrete and steel, but one shaky experience with the angry ghost later and they have no integrity left. Touch them—or kick them, as Doc does a supporting beam in the corner of his HQ that finds itself targeted by the angry ghost—and they crumble into nothing.
You will be shocked, I know, to find that there's also a beautiful girl. This time out, she's Annabel Lynn, the first character we meet, who encounters the angry ghost on Rockaway Beach. She tries to reach Doc by phone and then in person, but she's blocked at every effort. She's very capable though, as evidenced by her clever escape from a fake Ham. However, when she finally does meet the real Ham, with Monk in tow, of course, she only tells them that she wants to meet somewhere else. And we're off and running, almost literally, because this is such a restless novel that it just can't stay put for long.
Technically, that began in chapter one, because Annabel was in New York then but the two men chasing her then and the ones who kidnap her in chapter two prompt her to catch a train to Washington, DC, in which she tracks down Ham and Monk, who don't even get much of an opportunity to insult each other before she vanishes again. Doc shows up in chapter five, in New York, but he quickly flies to Washington and is brought down in Maryland. They're all back in New York in chapter eight but not for long because the story will take them to Connecticut, Massachusetts and eventually Maine, via a brief sojourn up to 30,000 feet in a stratosphere plane. It's a little dizzying.
What Bogart does well is to have his supporting characters play with our minds. Annabel Lynn may well be an innocent young thing caught up in a nightmare, but she seems too capable to be merely another feisty young thing for Ham and Monk to compete over. Her friend Warren Allen seems suspicious too, a nice guy with an uncanny habit of being in the right place at the right time. And there's Nanny Hanks, a homely middle-aged lady who constantly seems to be incredibly well-informed but who also has a talent for vanishing at the drop of a hat. What makes her most fun is how she manifests a crush on Monk, who wants nothing to do with her. Each of these characters could be a good guy or a bad guy and Bogart has enough red herrings littered throughout his story to keep us guessing.
What he doesn't do well is keep us focused, though I have a sneaking suspicion that shifting the action from city to city every ten minutes was his plan all along, just to disorient us. We certainly can't accuse him of skimping on fights or twists or revelations. He gets his fair share of destruction in too, knocking out military installations across the northeast, plus yet another one of Doc's planes. What's more, he has the angry ghost destroy a corner of the Treasury Building in New York and a corner of Doc's lab at HQ, including all the expensive equipment contained therein.
It's a neat weapon, especially when introduced at such an important moment in history. After all, this was 1940. World War II was already underway, though the United States wasn't yet part of the fight. I'd watched throughout to see how real life events in Europe throughout the thirties might have affected the series but started paying close attention during the 1939 novels to see if mention would be made. It took a while for the series to even acknowledge the existence of something going on in Europe. In fact, stories started to shift elsewhere so that they couldn't possibly be misinterpreted.
At this point, I'd say that there's an acknowledgement but it's cloaked so that, while the good guys are British, the villains are from a "little half-baked European country" without any mention of which one. What's most telling is that everything revolves around a threat to American military infrastructure, so the messages are that it exists and that it should be protected. There's even one very telling line about
"surprise weapons we're saving for anybody foolish enough to force this country into a war." Dent may not have gone there, but Bogart was flexing his chest and saying, don't try anything with America, you little half-baked European country, you.
Oddly, he didn't play the land of superheroes card, except as an implicit undercurrent. It's the surprise weapons that will save America, even though the only weapons we see here are disintegrated by little effort and the War Department doesn't trust Doc Savage enough to let him help them. Of course, Doc saves the day anyway and refuses to take any credit, but that's not the point, unless we're calling him a surprise weapon now. He certainly does an impressive job here, while everyone else plays second fiddle to a strong degree. Renny and Long Tom spend most of their time as prisoners. Monk and Ham have an unequal amount of success in fights but don't really make much difference in the grand scheme of it all.
What's more, the new little details we're told about here are Doc's work too. The stratosphere plane is an Army aircraft but it was built to Doc's specifications. When Ham and Monk are tied up and left to rot at one point, it's the cigar in Monk's pocket that enables them to escape. Crush it underfoot and it will secrete a chemical that rots ropes. That's an invention of Doc's not Monk's, even though he's a chemist and that would have been a great opportunity to bolster his scientific chops. Long Tom and Renny are in town because they've been working with Doc at the warehouse on a new diving bell he's perfecting, but it's clear that it's his project and they're just the help, even though Renny could have contributed some of his engineering skill.
The other new detail is handled by Doc, solo too. That's the hundred-foot mooring mast that sits on top of the famously unnamed building that features HQ as its 86th floor. Doc has that stuffed with gadgets to monitor their surroundings, right down to aircraft defense listening equipment. By the way, he gets up there via a narrow stairway that's concealed in the walls of his headquarters. There's plenty of stuff hidden in those walls, it seems, and we're still finding out about some of it.
What all this means is that there is progression here, from a series standpoint, but that's arguably its biggest draw. The story isn't particularly ambitious. The characters are few but worthy, because they're all drawn cryptically enough to matter. And, superscience MacGuffin aside, everything is acutely down to earth. What I took away most was how much of the novel was taken up by travel, with Doc and/or his aides—as well as many of the other characters—shift from here to there and back again with annoying frequency. If it's chapter six, this must be Washington, DC. And New York. And Maryland.
So it's about the progression for me. While the series wasn't yet ready to join the war, America wasn't either. However, there are hints here that the writers weren't unaware of the threat and the potential for their proudly neutral nation to end up involved. Of course, now we've got to this point, I'm eager to see when it escalates to the next level, because it has to. We're surely not going to be following Doc to lost worlds and hidden civilisations when American soldiers are dying overseas. But when will that shift happen? Inquiring minds want to know. Watch this space...
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in November 2022:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Voice...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
December 20, 2024
I conducted some preliminary research of The Angry Ghost after I inserted the original cover from the February, 1940 issue of Doc Savage Magazine into my PDF file; I learned from bronzeicon.com this story was not written by Lester Dent … but he spent as much time correcting the manuscript had he initially written it. Dent reprimanded his ghost writer, William Bogart, accordingly. Anyway, The Angry Ghost appeared in the February, 1940 issue of Doc Savage Magazine; twenty-two months before America’s entry into World War II.
The story opens in Rockaway Beach on Long Island, where a young woman appears to be strangled by an invisible culprit. Later, there is some sort of phenomenon that is destroying concrete structures on the East Coast, which ties in with this strange activity the young woman experienced. Doc is primarily a secret agent in this somewhat dull “adventure” and his men, minus Johnny, have been reduced to mere helpers. The “phantom war” in Western Europe was in the news when this story was published in February of 1940, but nevertheless, the European war was making the headlines. The Angry Ghost dealt with war preparations here in America. Thus, the story’s plot centered around espionage and the foreign spies who were the participants in such clandestine activities.
When this story was published in 1940, the United States was loaning various European countries money; the Lend-Lease Act, America’s massive foreign aid package, was signed into law in March of 1941. Renny, the most stalwart member of Doc's crew, mentions in Chapter XIV, a passing remark concerning the controversial government spending decisions that took place before America entered the war in December of 1941; here’s the conversation between Renny and Doc that ties the story to the current events of the day:
“Hell, we ain’t at war with anybody!”
“That’s true,” admitted the bronze man. “And yet, whatever this thing is, it is obviously directing itself against the security of coast-line fortifications.”
Renny, puzzled, asked, “Anybody declared war on us?”
Doc shook his head. “Relations with all foreign countries are the same as usual,” he said.
“Which means everybody in Europe’s tryin’ to borrow money from us,” boomed Renny.
Doc, happening to glance outside the cabin window, said quietly, “It wouldn’t be surprising if those men yonder were some of them.” 1
A few months after The Angry Ghost was published, the fall of France occurred in June of 1940, followed by the Battle of Britain and the London Blitz from July through October of that year; so, the European war had heated up. Franklin Roosevelt labeled the European conflict the “Second World War” in 1941.
The Angry Ghost was somewhat interesting, but the quality didn’t quite measure up to The Land of Terror, which I had just finished reading; it was the second story in the Doc Savage series. By the time The Angry Ghost appeared, Doc had been around for seven years; Lester was farming out a considerable amount of the work in regards to the monthly magazine, and the quality of the Doc Savage stories was beginning to wane; it was apparent to anyone who may have read several of the early Doc Savage stories. As always, Doc alleviates the story's conflict and clears up the loose ends including the explanation of the “secret weapon” the bad guys used in a question and answer session between him and Monk, who along the other guys were primarily on the sidelines in this one.
So, with that being said, I will give The Angry Ghost four stars because it incorporates some of the current events of the day into the somewhat dull story … a dull story that with a few minor changes could very easily be current events in our day and time, soon to be 85 years later. As I write this review, there is another European war raging between two countries on the “continent,” … a belligerent country has invaded its peaceful neighbor with the threat of yet a third world war precariously hanging in the balance. ****
1. The Angry Ghost; Chapter XIV, p. 46.
The story opens in Rockaway Beach on Long Island, where a young woman appears to be strangled by an invisible culprit. Later, there is some sort of phenomenon that is destroying concrete structures on the East Coast, which ties in with this strange activity the young woman experienced. Doc is primarily a secret agent in this somewhat dull “adventure” and his men, minus Johnny, have been reduced to mere helpers. The “phantom war” in Western Europe was in the news when this story was published in February of 1940, but nevertheless, the European war was making the headlines. The Angry Ghost dealt with war preparations here in America. Thus, the story’s plot centered around espionage and the foreign spies who were the participants in such clandestine activities.
When this story was published in 1940, the United States was loaning various European countries money; the Lend-Lease Act, America’s massive foreign aid package, was signed into law in March of 1941. Renny, the most stalwart member of Doc's crew, mentions in Chapter XIV, a passing remark concerning the controversial government spending decisions that took place before America entered the war in December of 1941; here’s the conversation between Renny and Doc that ties the story to the current events of the day:
“Hell, we ain’t at war with anybody!”
“That’s true,” admitted the bronze man. “And yet, whatever this thing is, it is obviously directing itself against the security of coast-line fortifications.”
Renny, puzzled, asked, “Anybody declared war on us?”
Doc shook his head. “Relations with all foreign countries are the same as usual,” he said.
“Which means everybody in Europe’s tryin’ to borrow money from us,” boomed Renny.
Doc, happening to glance outside the cabin window, said quietly, “It wouldn’t be surprising if those men yonder were some of them.” 1
A few months after The Angry Ghost was published, the fall of France occurred in June of 1940, followed by the Battle of Britain and the London Blitz from July through October of that year; so, the European war had heated up. Franklin Roosevelt labeled the European conflict the “Second World War” in 1941.
The Angry Ghost was somewhat interesting, but the quality didn’t quite measure up to The Land of Terror, which I had just finished reading; it was the second story in the Doc Savage series. By the time The Angry Ghost appeared, Doc had been around for seven years; Lester was farming out a considerable amount of the work in regards to the monthly magazine, and the quality of the Doc Savage stories was beginning to wane; it was apparent to anyone who may have read several of the early Doc Savage stories. As always, Doc alleviates the story's conflict and clears up the loose ends including the explanation of the “secret weapon” the bad guys used in a question and answer session between him and Monk, who along the other guys were primarily on the sidelines in this one.
So, with that being said, I will give The Angry Ghost four stars because it incorporates some of the current events of the day into the somewhat dull story … a dull story that with a few minor changes could very easily be current events in our day and time, soon to be 85 years later. As I write this review, there is another European war raging between two countries on the “continent,” … a belligerent country has invaded its peaceful neighbor with the threat of yet a third world war precariously hanging in the balance. ****
1. The Angry Ghost; Chapter XIV, p. 46.
November 30, 2024
The Angry Ghost 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, and 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.
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.
September 3, 2023
All of Doc’s crew are in this story except for Johnny. No mention of him is made by the author.
Doc and his men are desperately searching for clues as to why buildings and other structures are collapsing. Several characters come in and out of the spotlight while trying to solve the mystery.
The finale felt incomplete to me. Annabelle and her uncle exit to the story with little fanfare. Unlike previous books. Most of the action takes place in Washington, DC and New York City and surrounding area.
Doc, at one point during the story, is described as being angry and must get control of his feelings. One annoying bit has the author describing Monk and Ham as stopped at their hotel room instead of staying in their hotel room. Not sure what was going on with the author. He did this at least a couple of times.
Written by William G Bogart and Lester Dent. Originally published February, 1940.
Doc and his men are desperately searching for clues as to why buildings and other structures are collapsing. Several characters come in and out of the spotlight while trying to solve the mystery.
The finale felt incomplete to me. Annabelle and her uncle exit to the story with little fanfare. Unlike previous books. Most of the action takes place in Washington, DC and New York City and surrounding area.
Doc, at one point during the story, is described as being angry and must get control of his feelings. One annoying bit has the author describing Monk and Ham as stopped at their hotel room instead of staying in their hotel room. Not sure what was going on with the author. He did this at least a couple of times.
Written by William G Bogart and Lester Dent. Originally published February, 1940.
November 15, 2016
2.5 really. William Bogart's script involves the title spook destroying structures along the US coast, part of a sinister foreign plot. It comes off way too close to Terror in the Navy and the mystery would have been wrapped up in half the time if people had only talked more (Long Tom actually figures it out mid-book, then Bogart forgets about that). Only fair
November 3, 2025
I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but Doc Savage novels are kind of like pizza or tacos...even when they're not very good, they're still pretty good. This was not the strongest title in the series, but I still enjoyed it, especially the banter between Monk and Ham, and the . All in all, a good time.
September 12, 2023
Weak characterization and story development. Yes it's pulp fiction, but even in that context the novel couldn't deliver. It was like Bogart (writing under the Robeson pseudonym) was visiting Doc Savage and his world for the first time.
November 11, 2018
5 for nostalgia.
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.
December 31, 2010
My first Doc Savage tale. I picked my edition up for a quarter and read it on a beach in Maui. I absolutely loved it.
September 30, 2012
First Edition
November 17, 2018
read some time in 1985
Read
September 16, 2016Doc fights a invisible menace, good entry in the series like all of Dent's stories.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews