Dr Hermes Reviews – DOC SAVAGE 1934

Back to 1933

"Monk...Ham... remember where we parked the Zeppelin. We'll meet back here in two hours."

BRAND OF THE WEREWOLF (May 19, 2004) First, a friendly warning. Not so much a SPOILER as an ANTI-SPOILER, so you don`t get your hopes up, only to be let down. The cover to the Bantam paperback is a dramatic scene (by Mort Kunstler, not James Bama). Doc Savage is down on one knee, being throttled by what sure looks like Lon Chaney Jr as the Wolf Man. Bare from the waist up and covered in short bristly brown fur, sporting pointed ears and a pug nose and two short fangs jutting up from the lower jaw, this brute is a dead ringer for the monster model then popular from Aurora toys. I am certain that thousands of monster-crazed young boys (myself included) snatched this book up and ran home with it in a feverish frenzy. Well, sad to say, there is no werewolf in this story. Not even a crook in a rubber mask or a big German Shepherd covered with phosphorescent paint. Nope, just a gang of crooks who mark their attacks with a black smudge on the wall (made with a rubber stamp) of a wolf head with humanlike features. (Boo! Hiss! Hey mister, I want my forty-five cents back!) But please forgive Bantam for the misleading cover, because after all it did introduce all those kids to the amazing world of Doc Savage, and many of them got hooked, started looking for more adventures of the Man of Bronze and even today they have a warm spot in their nostalgia for him. So it was all for the good. From January 1934, BRAND OF THE WEREWOLF introduces Patricia Savage, Doc`s lovely and rambunctious young cousin. Pat will return as a regular many times in the series, adding a much needed spark of spontaneity and sass. She even gets to narrate an adventure in the first person, I DIED YESTERDAY (one of the best of the saga). Pat is almost always a delight, and we`ll examine her first appearance in some detail. This book begins with our six adventurers taking a train north to Canada for a vacation of hunting and fishing, and to visit Doc`s uncle Alex (Pat`s father). One of the things I enjoy most about the early stories is that we get a real feeling these guys are genuine lifelong friends, not a professional team of agents. Even the occasional banter here is gentle and affectionate (startlingly, Doc at one point joshes Monk, "Let`s see how fast you are on those bow legs of yours!") Not unexpectedly, the boys don`t even make it to their destination before they`re caught up in all kinds of murder and mayhem on the train, including a mysterious gas or something that nearly kills them. These attacks are marked by a grotesque emblem left on a wall or door, the halfhuman wolf face... the Brand of the Werewolf (Dum dum DUMM!). And an assortment of possible suspects are introduced, so keep an eye on them for clues. There seem to be two different groups after whatever it is they`re looking for, which complicate things. Back on his sizeable estate in a remote part of Canada, Alex Savage has died under suspicious circumstances. (We never actually see him or Doc`s father onstage in these tales). Aided by her Indian servants, a big fat woman named Tiny and a shiftless little guy called Boat Face (ah, those Incorrect days), eighteen year old Patricia is frightened but determined to find why her father died and who has ransacked her cabin. She knows they`re after a small ivory cube, which for some reason is vitally important. (The secret of the cube, by the way, is one of the more clever details Lester Dent came up with.) Well, there is a ton of action packed into the pages, many chases and escapes and seeming deaths. Doc`s team uses the beloved gadgets effectively, including the chalk that glows only under ultraviolet light, a boobytrap that releases the anesthetic gas and infrared aerial photography that reveals not only where the lost treasure is but also helpfully points out a bunch of hidden crooks with machine guns. Then there`s the trick of speaking Mayan so as not to be overheard, a description of the daily two hour exercises, villains deservedly getting caught in the death trap they had planned for others... all the little trademarks that gave this series its distinctive appeal. The bronze man himself is at his peak, a bit more accessible and friendly, even dryly witty than he would later become with that emotionless facade. Doc shows firm leadership and strategy, and he displays a perfectly respectable deductive ability. He can decipher a dozen set of footprints to know who went where and when, he spots clues that solve the mystery and he can tell a cabin was searched twice because two different substances have dried at different rates. If he had turned out a puny weakling, Doc`s training still would have left him capable to challenging Ellery Queen in esoteric detective work. On a physical level, our boy is like a ninja Hercules, appearing silently out of the shadows to seize burly crooks before they know what`s happening. In a classic example of Doc Savage at his best, he deals with a hemp rope stretched over a crevasse a hundred feet below. Hidden by mist from the nearby waterfall, the tightrope is wet and slick, none too taut. Doc blithely RUNS across this rope carrying a limp Pat, then goes back and does the same with the huge woman Tiny, as though it`s nothing. Sheesh. I don`t even like getting up on the roof to clear off a dead branch. Patricia Savage is recognizably herself right from the start. Eighteen year old, her father just buried, stuck in the wilderness miles from nowhere, her reaction to being harassed by gangsters is to strap on her pistol and load the rifle, then go after them. When she first meets her famous cousin (they don`t know each other at all), they`re both being chased by gunmen through the woods. Doc orders her to run, and Pat says, "If you need any help ----", to which the bronze man barks, "Do what I say!" Their very first words to each other capture perfectly their relationship for the next fifteen years. "Pat gasped with faint indignation. The fact that her father was a fairly wealthy man had not exactly spoiled her, but she was not accustomed to being told what to do in such short fashion." When she meets the five aides, they naturally are delighted at having this gorgeous teenager join the excitement. Considering the fact these guys fought in the Great War when she was an infant, hopefully it`s an avuncular sort of affection. ("Look at that bronze hair. Say, she might almost be Doc`s sister!") And right from the start, Pat wants to join the fun with these (let`s face it) rather bizarre looking adventurers. ("She felt an agreeable tingling. Doc Savage had called her ´Pat.´ This seemed to indicate that he had accepted her as one of the gang. Patricia was pleased.") She does fit in right, too. Monk and Ham each tell her that they other one has a wife and thirteen half-wit children, so she knows what kind of shenanigans to expect from these guys. Here, Monk first uses ventriloquism to make Habeas seem to talk, making Pat laugh with delight as Ham fumes. It`s just like someone`s kid sister joining the gang at the beach. All five aides are along for the entire party, always a plus. Monk gets the most to do, his specialty in chemistry being useful several times. Poor Long Tom gets two front teeth knocked out with a rock (he was distracted when a pretty girl made eyes at him). These guys take quite a beating over the years, it`s no wonder they all begin to cut back on the adventuring after a while. Broken arms and legs and ribs, gunshot and knife wounds, drowning, being beaten senseless, suffering the effects of the Green Death and the Blue Meteor and various poisons.... it`s not all jolly good times. As a Doc novel, BRAND OF THE WEREWOLF doesn`t have a superscientific threat that menaces the entire world, nor any scenes in the 86th floor headquarters. Instead, it`s a treasure hunt story, with pirates threatening innocent people to get the clue to the hidden loot. It works just fine; the book zips along nicely, with enough twists and surprises to keep those pages turning, some fine scenery descriptions from Lester Dent, and memorable characters. 1934 was a good vintage for pulp adventure.

THE MAN WHO SHOOK THE EARTH (April 14, 2004)         What a treat, re-reading a Doc Savage book from 1934 that I last read so long ago that I forgot most of the details (so it`s almost like a new book). The man of bronze and his five friends tackle a mysterious supercriminal who is committing murders by causing earthquakes! That`s something your typical hardboiled private eye never has to deal with. In a spectacular scene, Doc races through a valley, a woman hanging on his back for life itself, as he dodges bouncing boulders as big as cars and the ground is heaving so hard he has to move on hands and knees. ("Dust was pouring upward, like brown steam... The huge rocks came down the canyon sides with the speed of diving airplanes. Some of them bounced high in the air, so that the heavens seemed to rain them " Talk about the valley of the shadow of death!) From February 1934, THE MAN WHO SHOOK THE EARTH has the classic two part structure. First, Doc learns of a strange menace as an assortment of suspicious characters either try to enlist his help or bump him off; then, as the action is ready to kick in high gear, everyone rushes off to an exotic spot halfway across the world (in this case, Chile). I have always liked this plotting. You get plenty of action around the 86th floor and the Hidalgo warehouse as ominous hints and clues are laid down, setting up the game of "Spot the mastermind". Then it`s away to some faroff land as all hell breaks loose and our heroes really have their hands full. (The contrast between the blizzard in New York and the stifling heat in Chile is well done.) Reading the Doc stories from the War years and later, I find most of their distinctive flavor is missing. Yes, Lester Dent`s writing is tighter and more polished, the characters are less juvenile and more realistic and so on. But there are dozens of tough, callous detectives and spies to read about. There was only one Doc Savage. In THE MAN WHO SHOOK THE EARTH, we get colorful details like the six heroes speaking Mayan when they don`t want to be overheard, the bronze man climbing up the outside of a building by digging his fingers and toes inbetween the bricks, or Doc spraying a crook`s getaway car with a chemical that fluoresced under ultra-violet scene. In my favorite scene, the secret brotherhood of the Little White Brother are meeting with hoods on to keep their identities secret from each other. However, Doc has earlier soaked their hoods in a chemical solution and he now releases a mist that causes their disguises to turn into powder and fall off, revealing their faces. Classic Doc. (This story also has the appealing moment where our hero warns the villain not to try to kill him because it will mean death for himself. And of course, he does and it backfires fatally. The Avenger later made this technique of the boomerang death trap into an art, but Doc used it first.) All five of the aides see action and each of them gets to contribute to the investigation, using their special field of knowledge. Even the lawyer Ham is useful, digging around to see who would benefit from the 'earthquake murders'. In a wonderful moment, all six men take off in different planes from the Hidalgo Trading Company to search for crooks. As a longtime fan of Blackhawk (yay, Blackhawks!), I wish we could have seen Doc and his crew take on a squad of enemy fighter planes in one big dogfight, Maybe if the series ever is authorized to start up again.... This is the story where Johnny`s injured eye is repaired by Doc in a delicate operation. Typically, Doc did not tell the other aides to save them from worrying. I love the way Monk just about skips down the street whistling when he learns Johnny`s okay, and the warm way they all welcome the bony archaeologist back. In the early years, we really felt that these six men had been close friends for many years. Even Doc addresses them as "brothers". Did you ever think about how gruesome Johnny must have looked before the operation? I mean, he wasn`t a matinee idol in any case, but the guy used to wear glasses with a magnifying lense over his sightless eye so everyone else could get a good look at it. Ewww and ickkk. Thanks, Johnny. (Worth noting is that our favorite archaeologist has not yet developed his irritating big words addiction; he first greets his friends with "It`s O.K.I feel swell! The operation was delicate but there wasn`t a lot of cuts and stuff.") This early on, Doc is inscrutable and stoic but he still is loose enough to show a dry sense of humor. He refers to Ham`s luxurious apartment at the millionaire Midas Club as "this shack Ham calls home". The bronze man has installed a gimmick which makes doors on the 8th floor and Hidalgo warehouse mysteriously open by themselves as he approaches and he enjoys mystifying Monk with this. As the chemist puzzles over just how these doors are doing this, Doc`s only explanation is that he has them "trained". (He explains eventually, he`s just having fun.)                 There is the usual menagerie of suspects and secondary characters, including the sharp-tongued lady spy Tip Galligan in her tacky gold outfit and a pair of gruesome Dick Tracy-style gangsters, one of which has had his nose sliced off so he has has two fuzzy holes in his face instead. Most vivid and interesting, though, is General John Acre. This guy is the head of the secret police, although he seems to work alone without an office or staff. Acre is another bizarre looking galoot, with a huge hooked nose that reaches down to his mouth. (Despite this beak, he is somehow able to assume disguises.) Acre is so mean he packs a 'belly-buster' instead of a regular pistol. This is a gun that has had its barrel sawn off so that the bullet spins wildly. Accurate? Nah, but it sure leaves a big hole when it does hit and the general has no problem with shooting people who annoy him. Unfortunately, although John Acre makes quite an impression, his presence in the story is weakened by the fact there is an apparent imposter posing as him first running around Manhattan. Which is the real Dirty Harry of Chile? Or was that Acre himself up to no good in New York? Is Acre a master crook, maybe even the First Little White Brother himself? We find out eventually, but it gets a bit confused and the answer is not entirely satisfying. The game in these stories is that the villain is one of the unlikely characters tagging along with Doc but it doesn`t really work well this time. Finally, the organization behind the artificial quakes is called the Little White Brother, a name which makes no sense and sounds a bit silly. (The group`s password is "I am a black man, but my brother is little and white." Try to say that with a straight face!) I can`t figure this. Maybe in Spanish, the phrase has a sinister connotation. Mi hermanito blanco, or something like that? The only explanation I can come up with it that we know a European nation is behind all these disasters (they`re trying to corner the nitrates market) and at one point Mussolini and Hitler are mentioned dismissively. Could the Russian government then be behind this? Could the Little White Brother be a reference to Belorussia near Poland, often called White Russia back then (as opposed to Red Russia)? It beats me. All I can figure is that the phrase had some topical meaning to Lester Dent which has been lost over the decades.

METEOR MENACE (June 30, 2001) From March 1934, this is one of my absolute favorites in the entire series! I first read it as an impressionable, very imaginative kid and it's still highly charged entertainment all these years later. This is classic Doc Savage. All five aides appear for the entire story, there's a weird menace, a masked supervillain, action in Chile and Tibet, a gorgeous scientist's daughter (who gets engaged to Doc), gadgets and fights, more thrills and surprises than you'd think could be packed into a short novel. The 'Meteor Menace' of the title is the blue metor which crashed into a mountain of Tibet long ago; lamas built a temple over the site to contain the evil force but had to abandon it when they all went insane. Now when a strange whistling sounds and a blinding blue glare appears in the sky, anyone exposed to the menace loses all intelligence and becomes a brain-dead walking body. Yikes! Two henchmen, a Tibetan named Saturday Loo and a Cockney named Shrops (with *ugh* overdone dialect) have rebelled against their master and are trying to steer Doc Savage into destroying the threat. Commanding the eerie blue light is one of the best villains in Doc's rogues gallery--Mo-Gwei. Completely insane, cackling and screaming threats, Mo-Gwei has wiped clean the minds of thousands of Tibetans and is ready to expand his operations to global destruction. Hidden in yellow robes, Mo-Gwei wears the guise of Bron, the yak demon: a purple mask with curved horns and yellow glass eyeslits. There is a feeling of real suspense and danger when the blue meteor makes its onslaughts, as Doc has no defense against the menace and has no way to cure the people afflicted by it. One of the most startling moments in the series has the bronze man starting to lose his sanity as the blue thing screeches overhead. Doc manages to tie himself up with his last conscious thought so he won't damage himself once his mind is gone. What a cliff-hanger. All five aides get their share of attention. Renny manages to break a pair of handcuffs, cutting deep grooves in his wrists and when he jumps up to slug a villain ("fist and head seemed almost of equal size") the guy flies back across the room to slam into the wall. Ham walks around in hideous purple-striped pajamas. When Monk asks Long Tom what he's doing, the electrical expert snaps, "Shut up." (Long Tom is always a lot of fun to have for company.) The five aides are relaxed enough with Doc that they have a good laugh at his embaressment at finding himself seemingly engaged to the beautiful Rae Stanley. (She kisses him and he says, "This is a terrible situation.") He actually blushes and puts up with it good-naturedly; this is one of the scenes that best conveys that these guys are actually friends. Doc himself makes one of his best entrances, rescuing innocent people from gunmen. Our boy is in his prime here, jumping across rooftops, flattening half a dozen goons, climbing the outside of buildings with his fingers and toes, running along a public address cable over a crowd. He is using his devices full blast, including the bronze thimbles with hypodermics in them. He's also in good form as a detective. Finding the demon mask at one point, Doc poses as Mo-Gwei and tries to give out orders. The henchmen somehow know he's an imposter and our hero instantly knows Mo-Gwei's true identity and purpose. Go, Doc! The cover to the Bantam reprint was by Jim Aviati, and it's as good as most of the ones by James Bama. There's not as much detail in the rendering but the coloring is a neat touch. In a rocky mountainous area, seven Tibetans surround Doc, spears and axes ready to atttack. Our hero is ready for them. Everything is in shades of blue and purple from the strange light overhead EXCEPT for the bronze man himself, and his coloring makes him stand out in an almost three-dimensional way. Very nice work.

THE MONSTERS (July 26, 2001) From April 1934, this is one of the essential Doc Savage novels and probably is on the favorites list of many fans. It's too bad that the cover and back blurb of the Bantam reprint give away the nature of the monsters, since Lester Dent does a fine job in slowly revealing what they are. He is very good at revealing just enough to tease the reader as the story unfolds. In fact, this book shows his skill in building suspense that would later be used in the postwar mysteries. The cover to the Bantam edition (based very closely on the original pulp cover) is oddly misleading and it's puzzling why this scene was chosen when the story itself offers so many dramatic possibilities. We see Doc holding onto a cord with his left hand, waist deep in water, being gripped around the middle by an enormous human hand. In the story itself, the bronze man does haul himself up out of quicksand with a rope (an impressive stunt in itself) but he's trying to recover a normal body from the goo. It may be inaccurate (the hand is much larger than the monsters in the story) but it certainly is a vivid image and I imagine a lot of Doc fans can recall their reactions when they first saw it. Why Philip Jose Farmer classified this story as apocryphal is puzzling. Yes, there are reasons why humans twice normal size couldn't survive but other stories treat the laws of physics much more roughly than this book does. If anything, Lester Dent goes to some detail to make his creatures more plausible (Their enlarged vocal chords can't produce speech, for example). Doc and his aides are in their prime here. Each of the five is given assignments related to their specialties when possible (for once, Ham's skill is useful, as he's sent to research legal transactions the villains have been up to). There is a neat moment when Monk and Doc are running through the woods and they hear one of the superfirers shooting. Doc accelerates so fast that Monk feels he himself has suddenly started running backwards. Note too that Monk can just barely climb up Doc's silk cord and Ham (like Johnny and Long Tom in another story) can't manage it at all. Dent does make a goof here which may be poor research or just a slip of the typewriter. The "world's greatest woman lion-tamer" Jean Morris is able to speak the language of "the Pinhead tribe of African natives." I don't know what the acceptable, politically correct terms is for this unfortunate medical condition, but what made Dent think there was a tribe of pinheads? ("Yow! Are we having fun yet?" "Quiet, Zippy!") It seems likely that Lester Dent saw the unpleasant Tod Browning movie FREAKS, released two years before this story, and he may have thought the high-speed gibberish in the movie was a dialect of some kind. Still, the idea of a village somewhere in Africa, populated entirely by pinheads, is so bizarre that I'm glad Harold Davis didnt think of it or we'd spend a few chapters there. The United States in the 1930s had to be almost in hysterics from the mind-boggling dangers Doc averted. The Annihilist's eye-popping death, the murderous invisible men of the Spook Legion, the Repel weapons throwing tops off buildings, the streaks of light from the Comet Gang, the red snow, the sunrise at midnight that stopped electrical power, all the death rays and bizarre rampaging creatures...Whew. It's a good thing Clark Savage Sr. had decided to raise his son to be the world's greatest hero.

THE MYSTERY ON THE SNOW (June 25, 2001) For an adventure as early as May 1934, MYSTERY ON THE SNOW is not quite as wild and over the top as you might expect. Most of it is straightforward adventure in the far northern regions of Canada, and Dent gives quite a bit of attention to the terrain. You can tell when he (as a writer) is enjoying throwing in details and obsevations, and the freezing winter scene is always present in the narrative. The main villain, 'Stroam', is posing as a secondary character. Most of the conflict involves the henchman Kulden, who seems pretty resourceful and quick-thinking. There's also Midnat D'Avis, a private detective from Toronto, who doesn't get as much time on stage as she deserves (she does get to shoot a gun out of a thug's hand, which Renny remarks is quite a trick). The mystery of the title involves people being kidnapped or killed out in the snow-covered wilderness, with no tracks leading away or other clues as to how this was done. The final solution is possible if a bit of a stretch, but it does give the narrative a creepy undertone. The gadgets are out in full force in this story, and I'd forgotten how much fun they can be: the powder that glows, outlining footprints in carpets; the radioactive lining of the shoes the Five wear, which enables them to be located (hey, Doc, isn't that a bit of a health hazard?), gas dropped from a plane that makes car motors stall, and a wide assortment of speed planes. Doc himself is running at maximum in this story. He not only has deductive and observational powers that Sherlock Holmes would admire, he charges into a cabin filled with six armed hoods and flattens them in a few seconds. (It's remembering him in his early stories that makes his self-doubting and nervous post-war adventures so disappointing to fans) There is one moment that's cute. After a long monotonous flight to the north, Monk and Ham get into a skirmish that actually turns into full scale fighting. Sober old Renny starts to break it up, so both Johnny and Long Tom jump him to prevent that, and all five are roughhousing for a few moments. Dent observes tolerantly that they're acting like kids, but it helps them to let off steam. Again, I have to say that I just don't like the cover to the Bantam paperback. Pfeiffer has done a okay rendition of Doc himself, with more detail and definition than his usual. But come on--it's called MYSTERY ON THE SNOW, set in the Yukon, and our boy is posed in front of vague red and purple swirls which really don't suggest a frozen wilderness. Neither does the usual torn shirt (either give him a parka or at least have a plume of frozen breath exhaled). And why put on the cover the solution to the main mystery of the story? Sheesh.

THE KING MAKER (June 12, 2001) From June 1934, this is a fine example of 'Ruritanian adventure', a genre almost forgotten today but very popular for decades. Its most famous example is Anthony Hope's THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, filmed a number of times (the Stewart Granger version from the 1950s is still very entertaining). This genre involves intrigue in a small European country, royalty, impending war, impersonation and swordfights. At its best, it's a lot of fast-moving entertainment. Here we have the small nation of Calbia, a Balkan principality with a royal family threatened by a revolutionary movement. Doc is approached to intervene but no one is quite what he or she claims to be at first. There is a good deal of scheming, double-crossing and deception going on. In addition to King Dal Le Galbin and his daughter Princess Gusta (OF COURSE she's gorgeous, did kings ever have homely daughters), two main players in the game are a homicidal dwarf named Muta and the grossly overweight Conte Cozonac,who calls himself the King Maker and who offers the throne of Calbia to Doc himself. At 170 pages, THE KING MAKER is one of the longest novels in the series and this gives room for some interesting digressions. The best part is that Doc and the Five split up to investigate what the situation is in Calbia, none of the aides knowing what the others are up to. Renny gets a good deal of action by himself (he's always been my favorite of the five). The bigfisted lug poses as a red-haired loudmouth aviator named Champ Dugan, hiring his services to the Calbian throne. Renny gets to do some spectacular barnstorming and dogfighting in his gaudy plane, and he enjoys playing the part of a brash, boastful soldier of fortune. LIke Doc himself, Renny seems to relish acting a role that's the opposite of his normal personality. This is the only time that I found Johnny's dialogue believable. His vocabulary is what an educated man might normally use, big words that are distinctive but not so obscure or specialized as to be annoying. One of the few criticisms I have of Lester Dent's characterization is that Johnny needlessly irritates everyone he meets with those words. Here he says things in every sentence like "hypothesis", "advocate", "enigmatic", "nefarious" and so forth--words the average person is likely to understand. I only wish this more subtle and likeable characterization had stuck. The way Doc is presented in the early novels is terrific. He's just at the upper limit of believability. In a hospital which he finances, surgeons gather to watch him operate on a man with a fractured skull. When someone gives an address on 14th Street, he immediately knows there is no building with that number. He speaks fluent Calbian (Dent throws in a large number of bizarre Calbian words and phrases throughout the story). And as soon as they are attacked by a mysterious weapon which blows up targets in complete darkness, he has a good enough idea of what it is that he devises a defense against it. Physically, our hero is at his peak. He runs up the stairs with a 300 pound man under one arm. In disguise, he wipes out a crowd of soldiers and Renny, who doesn't know who this stranger is, decides he couldn't defeat the man himself. When the floor drops away beneath him in a narrow passage, the bronze man leaps up sideways to jam his feet against one wall and his shoulders against the other wall, then works his way down the hall like that, and as the mastermind peers through the door to see if the trap worked, a big bronze fist smacks him right in the ksser. Go, Doc! One of the things I enjoy best about Lester Dent's writing is the way he compares Doc's startling accomplishments with the real life people who can do such things. This makes it more believable and at the same time reminds the reader that there are people who can do amazing feats. Doc has developed toes that are nearly as prehensile as fingers, to the extent that he can tie a knot in a string with one foot. This sounds hard to buy, but he learned this from circus performers and amputees who can shave, drive nails and turn the pages of a book with just their feet. The range and variety of Doc's skills are incredible, but each one is within human ability. The cover of the Bantam reprint is by Fred Pfeiffer, and it's the best one he did for the series. In front of heavy red drapery, Doc sits back on a simple marble throne. One fist to his chin like Rodin's Thinker, his face in deep shadow, it's a strangely evocative image and an odd one to choose for the cover. I'm starting to appreciate Pfeiffer's art more as time passes. He may not have been well suited for Doc Savage but there is more merit to his style than I thought at first.