This review originally appeared on Goodreads on May 24, 2016.

The Land of Terror (Doc Savage #2)

By Kenneth Robeson (House Name)/Lester Dent – Street & Smith – 1933

Review by Robin Marx

Doc Savage's second adventure (according to the serial publication date, rather than the novel series') is a lackluster one. It starts off interestingly enough, with an acquaintance of Doc Savage falling victim to a mysterious assassination, his body almost completely dissolved by an unknown substance. While action packed, the story and characterization that follows is sleight, even by pulp fiction standards.

One weakness is that the heroes don't reach the titular Land of Terror until literally halfway through the book. The first half mostly involves Doc Savage and his crew dealing with thugs led by a shadowy villain known as Kar. Savage discovers their hideout, a cheesy pirate ship museum, fairly early on, but for some reason he ends up making multiple trips to this same location, rather than dealing with the criminals in one fell swoop. While there are some exciting set pieces (including the classic situation where a sidekick is trapped in a chamber slowly filling with water), it feels strange that Savage keeps returning there.

Things pick up when Savage and his friends finally end up at the Land of Terror (that's actually the name used for the island in the text). As the cover reveals, the place is a “Lost World” filled with aggressive dinosaurs.

There's some attempt to play up the “mystery” surrounding Kar's identity, but that plot thread is fairly limp. I suspect most readers paying a modicum of attention to the story will pick up on it.

One issue I noticed in the first story returns in the second as well: Doc Savage has too many friends. The bickering between the apish chemist Monk and the prissy lawyer Ham continues to entertain, but Doc Savage's other three traveling companions (Renny, Long Tom, and the Other Guy) still don't have any memorable (or even distinguishing) qualities, nor do they contribute much to the plot apart from serving as kidnap victims.

While not a bad story, this volume was uneven and merely OK. Hopefully the next installment is closer in quality to the first book.

★★☆☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on January 9, 2017.

The Polar Treasure / Pirate of the Pacific (Doc Savage #4 & #5)

By Kenneth Robeson (House Name)/Lester Dent – Street & Smith – 1934

Review by Robin Marx

The Polar Treasure was a lot of fun, but the accompanying Pirate of the Pacific was perhaps the weakest installment in the series this far, even worse than Quest of the Spider.

The Polar Treasure starts off with the kidnapping of a blind master violinist and ends up with a submarine voyage to the arctic. The action is great, Doc's exploits are clever, and the supporting characters memorable. One twist was that instead of one nefarious criminal gang, Doc and his crew find themselves dealing with two competing gangs of crooks. This adds an extra dimension to the narrative not seen in previous installments.

While The Polar Treasure was a great deal of fun, Pirate of the Pacific was a dull slog. Taking place immediately after The Polar Treasure (Doc and his friends are journeying back from the arctic circle in their submarine), the story involves a “modern day” pirate named Tom-Too attempting to conquer the “Luzon Union” (apparently the fictionalized Philippines). I found it difficult to remain involved in the action. There's a briefly interesting passage where Doc and his pals go incognito on the same ocean liner as Tom-Too and his cronies, but Doc Savage's pals are repeatedly and monotonously kidnapped and rescued over the course of the story. Doc's escapes from danger are even more unbelievable than usual, and even the shark attack scenes are less exciting than they could have been. When Tom-Too's true identity was revealed as a fairly unobtrusive supporting character I couldn't summon up much more than a shrug.

While it tinges pretty much all of the Doc Savage stories given the time period, the racism in Pirate of the Pacific is particularly egregious. Tom-Too's gang is a mix of Asian ethnicities, so there are lots of references to “slanted-eyes,” yellow skin, “half-castes,” and so forth. The Man of Bronze spends a great deal of time undercover in yellow-face, speaking in the same cringe-worthy “Me so solly!” pidgin and fawning “O most beneficent one!” pseudo-Chinese speech as the evil Asian criminals. As a pulp fiction fan I generally don't get too worked up about outdated depictions of ethnic minorities, but they were particularly prominent and ignorant in Pirate of the Pacific. The Polar Treasure had some references to foul-smelling, superstitious Eskimos, but they weren't portrayed as wicked sub-humans.

The Polar Treasure was one of the better Doc Savage yarns, but I think Pirate of the Pacific can be safely skipped.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on September 18, 2019.

The Man Who Shook the Earth (Doc Savage #12)

By Kenneth Robeson (House Name)/Lester Dent – Street & Smith – 1934

Review by Robin Marx

This installment in the Doc Savage series has a lot in common with previous volumes Quest of the Spider and The Czar of Fear. All of these stories deal with a disguised criminal mastermind trying to muscle out the competition and take over a specific industry. The previous two books involved lumber and mining, while this one involves nitrate production.

I groaned a bit when I saw the direction this story was taking, but the end result was more interesting than those previous two stories. Rather than taking place in the US, this story involved both New York and Chile, and—even when lightly sketched and reliant on broad stereotypes—Doc Savage's globe-trotting adventures tend to be the most fun.

The villain was also more intriguing this time, as his interest in nitrate production was about more than just personal enrichment. The reader is kept guessing as to the villain's true identity up until the very end, as well, instead of being obvious from their first appearance.

Despite the somewhat formulaic approach, this ended up one of the more interesting installments in the series.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on August 25, 2016.

Quest of the Spider (Doc Savage #3)

By Kenneth Robeson (House Name)/Lester Dent – Street & Smith – 1933

Review by Robin Marx

Despite being marked as #68, Quest of the Spider was originally printed as the third Doc Savage adventure.

I found this story to be a mixed bag. The swampy setting is interesting (albeit not as much as a dinosaur-filled Lost World) and there's plenty of action, but the core premise—the search for a shadowy crime lord who has been disrupting Louisiana's lumber industry—isn't as exciting as the ones presented in the first two stories.

Much of the second half of the story takes place deep in the swamp, where Doc Savage and his companions battle against the titular Grey Spider's henchmen, an isolated Creole voodoo tribe called the Cult of the Moccasin. This portion of the story has a lot of excitement, but readers are also subjected to a lot of dodgy pulp representation of the Cajun dialect and the voodoo cult characters are stereotyped as ignorant savages (mixed race but exhibiting only the worst characteristics of their origins and none of the positive ones, to paraphrase a line from the book) who revel in the idea of sacrificing a white child. That being said, late in the story two of the named swamp folk are given a bit more development; one realizes the error of his evil ways and another's defects are revealed to be the result of a brain injury and cured by Savage.

One interesting aspect of this story is how Doc Savage captures most of his opponents alive, drugs them, and has them shipped to a secret facility Savage has established in upstate New York, where he “corrects” criminal behavior through neurosurgery. This probably seemed both high-tech and humane at the time these stories were written (they're fixed now!), but perhaps seems a little ominous to the modern reader in our more cynical era.

Another interesting part of the story is how little “screen time” Doc Savage himself receives. He's missing and presumed dead for much of the last third of the book, and it's his assistants that feature most heavily. Also starring are a two-fisted lumber baron and his amazingly gorgeous daughter with an amazingly dowdy name: Edna. Both play an active role in helping Doc Savage help them. Once again we see Doc Savage ignore a beautiful woman's attention. This is presented as evidence of his gravely serious nature and lack of time for frivolity, but I like a bit of “spice” (to use the pulp term) and it seems like a missed opportunity for drama to me.

Like the last book, there's a bit of mystery surrounding the identity of the Grey Spider. It's not as blatantly telegraphed as in the second Doc Savage book, but neither is the reader given much of a reason to suspect the true enemy, nor is he given much of a motive than pure greed. The result is that when the Grey Spider is revealed, my reaction was less a gasp than a shrug. OK.

All-in-all this was a brisk, energetic read, but it didn't grab me as much as the stories that precede it.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on October 17, 2018.

The Czar of Fear (Doc Savage #9)

By Kenneth Robeson (House Name)/Lester Dent – Street & Smith – 1933

Review by Robin Marx

While this book had some high points, overall it was a pretty tepid entry in the series so far.

The plot felt like it borrowed a great deal from previous installment Quest of the Spider, but with the sinister criminal mastermind attempting to move in on a mining town rather than the lumber industry. I tend to prefer Doc Savage's more globe-trotting expeditions, however, so this small town America-bound story was less engaging for me. Apart from the titular Czar of Fear, the Green Bell, the other antagonists seemed pretty one-dimensional and ineffectual.

On the plus side, the villain makes some interesting use of technology and is also fairly clever in his struggle against Doc Savage. Having Doc on the run from false murder allegations also adds an extra twist to the tale, making this adventure seem like slightly less of a cakewalk than usual for him. And while I missed Ham's absence from most of the narrative, Long Tom has a bit more spotlight time than most episodes and Monk's soft spot for beautiful women is brought up again.

Overall, this book is worth a read for Doc Savage fans, but it's not a particularly distinguished or memorable adventure.

★★☆☆☆

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