Dr Hermes Reviews - DOC SAVAGE 1939

Back to 1938

MAD MESA (Dec 12, 2004) This is the best Doc Savage story by a dam site (harr). From January 1939, this story is brisk, engrossing and a lot of fun, but man! is it far-fetched. There are no death rays that melt your skeleton or lost Aztec cities in Oregon, but there is a scheme by a bunch of crooks that is so elaborate and unnecessarily difficult as to be stunning in its wrong-headedness. It's like those Rube Goldberg cartoons where twenty objects had to affect each other in sequence to turn on the ceiling fan. Of course, the reason for this is that most of the story builds up the mystery of what the heck is going on here, and the explanation Lester Dent comes up with is physically possible but quite unlikely. The enjoyment here is in trying to figure it out and grinning at the solution presented. (Frankly, a lot of "locked-door" and "enigmatic dying clue" mysteries are just as hard to swallow in their own eye as anything in a Doc Savage adventure.) Also, it seems funny that I think of this as a minor, middle-range Doc Savage adventure when it does involve the imminent poisoning of thousands of innocent people to get hold of a fortune in gold, but then, with Doc it's all relative. He goes from saving America or the world from the Munitions Master and the Mystic Mullah to solving a single mundane homicide in some of the postwar books. This story just falls in-between the extremes. The first part of MAD MESA is concerned with an interesting dilemma that likeable young Tom Idle finds himself in. Looking for work in Salt Lake City (you know, with a name like "Idle", possible employers might be a bit prejudiced against you from from the start), Tom goes to sleep on a park bench and wakes up to find that not only is he wearing completely different clothes, he physically looks like someone else. Everybody he meets tries to either kill him or run away in terror, and it turns out he is now apparently a dangerous gangster called Hondo Weatherby. Before the poor guy can gather his wits and figure out if he has been transformed somehow or is suffering from mental illness, he finds himself on the run from the police, is conked over the cranium and revives to find himself securely locked up in utah State Penitentiary. No one there believes he is anybody other than the notorious Hondo Weatherby, not the warden nor his cellmate, a seven foot tall brute called Big Eva (don't ask). (Mike Shayne dealt handily with a similar switched-identity problem in CALL FOR MICHAEL SHAYNE and I'm sure the premise has been used many times.) Well, Tom does what any right-minded denizen of Pulpland is advised to do under circumstances like these. He writes to Doc Savage for help. Soon enough, the bronze man and all five aides (as well as Tom's sister Nona, who is not surprisingly beautiful) are tangled up in the mysterious schemes of a criminal gang who have a large but puzzling caper under foot. Investigating, Doc disguises himself as Big Eva and is doped by the gang to end up in the cell with Tom. In a neat moment, even the confident and self-possessed man of bronze starts to get twinges of doubt about his identity. So he grabs the iron bars. ("Was this really his body? He had to know that. The sinews stood out on his arms and shoulders. His temples pounded with effort- and the cell bars slowly gave." Watching, Tom Idle is impressed.) Showing less foresight than usual, Doc has not thought to arrange some means of proving his identity and (even though he has taken off his tinted contact lenses to show those weird golden eyes), our hero cannot convince the authorities. He sighs and improvises a bold prison break. After that, he hauls Tom along with him as he starts to unravel out what is behind all these shenanigans. There is this clue involving weeds salvaged from the wheels of the gangster's plane and Doc uses his Baker Street training as a boy to good effect. Complicating matters is the fact that the train carrying the five aides (and Tom's sister) has completely vanished. Not wrecked or detoured onto a sideline, just evaporated into the desert air. So Doc and Tom have even stronger motivation to get cracking. It all winds up with a very melodramatic scene of destruction and massive loss of life on the spillway of the Stone Mountain Dam. (The building of this dam had backed up water around the four thousand foot high Mad Mesa of the title, making it an island.) Lester Dent's writing is clean and brisk as usual, and his descriptions of Ohio and Utah bring clear mental images to mind without devoting pages to detailed travelogues. Dent was great at picking out just the right detail here and there to establish the setting or to convey a fight's outcome. The scene set at a burning underground coal bed is creepy enough for a horror story. Dent's wry flashes of humour are another reason why the series has aged so well. Wearing a germ-proof coverall suit, Doc has been working in his lab for twelve hours on a cure for the common cold. "All I found out was how to catch one," he admits with a few embarrassed sneezes. Doc Savage himself screws up slightly once or twice, but the rest of the time, he is a few steps ahead of everyone else. His improvised ruses to fool the crooks into thinking he has been killed or to steal the warden's car show his love of trickery and misdirection. Although he could actually just bulldoze his way through most situations with brute force or the gadgets, the bronze man obviously loves using techniques like ventriloquism and impersonation to maneuver people where he wants them; it might be because as an actual MD, he wants to avoid violence but it sure seems like he just enjoys doing things in a roundabout way. For those who recall Doc's murderous rampages in his first few exploits, consider his words to Tom as the man is about to shoot a crook. "Killing men keeps you awake at night. Even men like these." A neat, understated reason why the policy against taking life and the Crime College was developed. All five aides appear (yay!) but sadly are taken prisoner for most of the game and don't get to contribute much. Habeas Corpus and Chemistry show up for a brief moment but then are completely forgotten and I can only assume they took a train back to NYC (Chemistry handling the fares). I love the disguises the aides assume as they are trailing the gang on a train. Johnny is an old man with a beard, Long Tom is made up like a grandma with a cane (I'm surprised he came up with this, considering how touchy he is about teasing remarks). Monk, Ham and Renny all appear in blackface. Yep, "black and shiny as a Concord grape." Egads, I realize that black Americans in that era might not have been considered conspicuous, especially when they're acting as porters as they are here. In THE VANISHER, the aides turn up incognito in such bizarre and attention-grabbing disguises that I imagine Doc gave them some stricter guidelines to use. In the big finale, the aides get to use the superfirers with explosive shells effectively for once. Even greatly outnumbered, the six men can rout the larger force with these weapons. Doc even uses one machine pistol "like a field piece", raising the barrel to lob explosive blasts ahead of a fleeing barge. It's too bad the superfirers were too expensive and required too much skilled maintenance to be mass-produced for the Army in WW II.... you can bet they would bring about V-Day months or even years earlier.

THE YELLOW CLOUD (Aug 9, 2001) From February 1939, this book is a hard one to evaluate. The actual writing seems to have been done very quickly and off-the-cuff, and the mystery of 'the yellow cloud' itself is one of the most disappointing revelations in the entire series. On the other hand, there is a good amount of action and surprises, with some very funny dialogue. For no plausible reason, the villain's hideout has been built like a carnival fun house, complete with rotating rooms, a live bear chasing our heroes, and a spinning cone over a pit full of spikes. ("Don't miss the next thrill-packed chapter of THE YELLOW CLOUD in this theatre next week!") This was during the period where Harold Davis was writing about every other story, so it may well be that Davis turned in an unacceptable script which Lester Dent either re-wrote or edited heavily. Certainly, the opening chapter, with its awkward lecture on how unprepared the Army was, has a clumsy feel to its prose. The difference is really noticeable toward the end, where the usual crackle of Dent's style returns. This is the story where Monk gets so fed up with being teased about his looks that he goes to Pat Savage's new resident plastic surgeon for 'a beauty operation' and spends most of the book running around with his face bandaged. Ham is completely unsympathetic with this decision and only when he sees the swollen, disfigured face as the bandages are removed for a moment, does he show any remorse. The banter between Ham and Monk is bearable because the chemist doesn't mind the way he looks; any suggestion that he's genuinely hurt by the insults changes everything. Patricia Savage herself has some of her best moments in this story. She first appears as Doc and his crew find they can't exit the pneumatic car of the 'flea run' from the 86th floor. Pat is already in the hangar; she's locked the mechanism and won't release them until Doc agrees to allow her to join this adventure. And when Ham is explaining to a secondary character about Doc's five assistants, Pat chimes in, "Six assistants! Don't forget about me!" Long Tom spends most of the narrative fretting over why his new television transmitter is doing impossible things, stopping now and then to snap at people. Still, despite his grumbling, it's notable that Long Tom never actually loses his temper enough to take a swing at his friends. Renny does a walk-on at the very beginning and end, but he does manage to break a couple of knuckles punching a log wall. (Maybe if he had studied karate...) There is a wonderful moment early on when two of the shady characters are worrying about how clever Doc is and how he may already know who the mastermind is and what the scheme involves. We later find out that Doc had solved the mystery even BEFORE the scene where the crooks were worried about his getting wise. That's our boy. If Doc Savage carried guns and used them as promptly as the Spider, these adventures would be about eight pages long. A key to the mystery involves a photograph of the airplane-eating 'yellow cloud.' The bronze man studies it and realizes by the constellations' positions that it could not have been taken at the time claimed. Now Ellery Queen (much as I enjoyed those books) would have gotten a complete novel out of that clue, and fighters like James Bond or Mike Hammer wouldn't have figured it out at all. There aren't many heroes on the deductive level of Sherlock Holmes and a fighting par with Conan the Barbarian. Go, Doc! The cover to the Bantam reprint is one of James Bama's least effective. The figure of Doc himself is (as usual) fine, but the black-edged yellow cloud, against a plain white background, is really unsightly. A shot of Doc on the ground staring up at a fully rendered sky, with some realistic clouds-- one of which is bright yellow-- would have been much more appealing. Oh well...

THE FRECKLED SHARK (Nov 21, 2004) SPOILERS AHEAD Just so you know. This March 1939 adventure is best remembered for the infamous "Henry Peace" affair, but before we get into that, I'd like to discuss the story itself. THE FRECKLED SHARK is a lively, quick-moving tale about an assortment of shady characters chasing each other around over a fortune worth millions (forty or fifty), involving the lives or deaths of thirty people. No one's version of what's going on can really be taken at face value, not even the seemingly trustworthy folks. These people mean business, too; there are plenty of murders, torture and cruelty going on and it's not a genteel jewel robbery caper by any means. Despite all the suspense and action, Lester Dent throws in some genuinely funny lines almost as afterthoughts. When he was trying to write outright farce, Dent seemed uncomfortable; when he has a character make a joking remark in a tight situation, the little touch of humour strikes me as just the sort of thing a real person would say to break the tension. The narrative asides are also wry; Doc ties up a suspect, and "about the only thing he could move was his ears." Of course, the whole hook of the story, the Henry Peace scandal, is amusing in itself and also shows some rare insight into a normally opaque character. In the first twenty pages, Lester Dent gets the reader hooked by laying down one puzzling incident after another, all of which seem to fit together somehow. Who is this guy Jep Dee, found half-dead from exposure and vicious torture, with a knotted rope around his neck which he refuses to have removed? What's the deal with the scrap of freckled shark hide, which he thinks is immensely crucial but which is a clue absolutely no one can figure out? Why are this gangster Horst (who looks like the Devil with muscles) or Senor Steel (the dread dictator of Blanca Grande) interested in the whole mess? Then there's the cantankerous old soldier of fortune Tex Haven (who carries five pistols hidden on his person) or his nubile daughter Rhoda (who has degrees from four universities and is expert in medicine, archaeology and government administration as well as being a mercenary with a reward on her head). They're in it up to their chins but they won't explain anything either. When Rhoda goes to enlist Doc Savage's aid, she pours out lies (she starts with, "My name is Mary Morse") but because she is sitting in a chair with a built-in lie detector, it gets her nowhere. Doc doesn't show himself, but he sends her off with Johnny to recruit Monk and Ham, and the pulp rollercoaster ride takes off. After that, there is much violence, intrigue, running back and forth, sneaking through the Florida mangroves at night, aerial dogfights, double-crosses and deception, until gradually it all becomes clear. Even Doc finds himself surprised at a few of the plot twists, and is shocked to think he has been duped.. Johnny is along for the ride, and he is (as usual) the most likeable of the aides. He makes conscious efforts to use understandable language, although he keeps backsliding into the frankly irritating habit. Just once, I would like for someone to remind him that one sign of an educated person is the ability to communicate clearly. As it is, one goon says, "Oh. One of them guys, eh? I don't see why these foreigners who come over here can't speak English." Even so, Johnny is the most thoughtful and considerate of the regular cast, and Doc (as he does in other stories) seems to appreciate Johnny's opinions the most. Here, he takes the bony archaeologist away from the other two aides to ask him what he should do in a delicate situation. Monk and Ham tend to bulldoze over people, either physically or through verbal manipulation but Johnny is concerned with other peoples' feelings. Doc trusts only him to give sound advice; I always got the impression Johnny was the oldest of the gang, maybe even one of Doc's teachers. This is still pulp characterization, of course with broad strokes and bright colors, but Dent always manages to add little human touches to his cast. Monk and Ham are their usual selves, carrying on their schizoid love affair where they can't stop insulting each other but fret when the other is in trouble. I know they're straight (c'mon), but honestly they remind me of several married couples I know. We can note here that Chemistry barely comes up past Monk's knees (pretty tiny for a chimp and he can't really be a baboon because he doesn't have a muzzle or tail). Alan Hathaway and Harold A Davis somehow got the idea that Chemistry was five feet tall, able to wear adult clothing or drive an ambulance (!), but Dent's original concept was that he was not much bigger than a monkey. Maybe Doc tried some growth hormones on the ape. I do like the way that, when trapped in an underground room with a gang, Monk yells to lock the door so they can't escape ("There were at least a dozen men in the room. Monk, the optimist, didn't want any of THEM to get away."). The main appeal of THE FRECKLED SHARK, of course, is that Doc spends most of it disguised as a rude, insolent ruffin with bright red hair and a larcenous streak. This is Henry Peace, and it's not really giving much away by revealing the pose because Lester Dent lays on some heavy hints from the start and quickly makes it obvious. As Henry, Doc gets to laugh loud and often, propose marriage to a beautiful girl as soon as he meets her, and insult Monk and Ham. He tells Monk,"If you had kept that nose out of other people's business, it might not look so funny." Then he goes over to Ham (the "dandy") and yanks up the tails of the fashion-obsessed lawyer's coat, splitting it up the back. He also knocks both of them on their backs with a single punch each, then chases them off by throwing bricks ("Irish confetti") at them. Gee. Do you think Doc might be acting out impulses toward these two guys he had kept bottled up for years? Not to mention then acting on the powerful attraction to women he felt but could barely admit, even to himself. The price for Doc's superhuman abilities and knowledge was lifelong discipline and self-sacrifice, being a scientific Puritan. As much as we might like a quick glimpse of Doc up in the Fortress of Solitude, unshaven and reading SPICY ROMANCES in his underwear, while working on a six-pack, it would never happen. It took a few years of World War II and a nearly fatal head trauma before his emotional repression began to crack and he could open up. Doc was never quite the invincible demi-god again after his feelings started coming out, but I sort of think he started enjoying life more and not living every moment for his noble mission. Doc is a trained psychologist, of course, and he has just enough self-awareness to realize this Henry Peace role could easily get out of hand. Sort of like Catholic high school girls getting drunk for the first time when their folks are away -- once you uncork the bottle, it's tough to get the djinn back in; if Doc started enjoying being Henry for too long, it might be tempting to start skipping those two-hour daily exercises and long hours sweating over hot test tubes or dull 1200-page textbooks. He is also understandably tempted when the gorgeous Rhoda starts to tumble for Henry and there is every sign he could easily be getting somewhere with her. What a pickle for the severely repressed bronze man. Personally, I would have liked to see Henry come back as a recurring character whenever the situation allowed it. He could be Doc's secret identity, a boisterous and fun-loving Mr Hyde offering much-needed chances to blow off steam. Since Monk immediately and strongly dislikes the guy, there could be some fresh comic relief to replace the tired bickering with Ham. Dent could even have pulled the old amnesia gag where Doc is struck on the head while in the disguise and thinks he really IS Henry Peace. Only Doc himself can come up with a defense against the shrivelling Purple Fog or whatever, and this Henry guy is just getting in the way of the search for him. (Fan fiction writers out there, these ideas are free.) As it is, although he will occasionally impersonate other uncouth galoots, Doc puts Henry away and never goes back. By the end of the story, Ham and Johnny have learned about the impersonation, but since Henry has treated him so rough and easily won Rhoda over despite Monk's efforts, Doc sternly tells them never to let the lecherous chemist know. "The bronze man sounded so deathly serious that Johnny and Ham doubled over laughing. It was the first time they had ever laughed AT Doc Savage (actually, there was the earlier case where Doc somehow found himself engaged without knowing how in METEOR MENACE....)" Even when his hero was at his most stoic and poker-faced, Lester Dent usually dropped hints that Doc felt normal emotions like fear or doubt and even sexual attraction, but just kept them pushed below the surface. Here is the clearest instance of the writer letting us in on what is actually going on behind those swirling gold-flecked eyes, and it makes this book a lot of fun. THE FRECKLED SHARK is one of the top dozen or so Doc novels every fan should be sure to read.

"This`ll be great, Doc! A whole day of fun with no mad scientists or gangsters..."

WORLD'S FAIR GOBLIN

(July 21, 2001)

From April 1939, this was the first Doc Savage book written by William G. Bogart, with Lester Dent doing some revising. While it shows some signs of being written hastily, the story does crackle right along at a good pace. The assorted suspects running back and forth are pretty sketchy and undeveloped (Adam Ash made no impression and I had to go back and re-read who he was), but there is a memorable, bizarre figure in the monstrous Maximus.

The villain's main scheme, which involves building an 'accumulator' which can drain and store electrical energy, doesn't seem to have much connection with Maximus. A few references to the Goblin as the Man of Tomorrow seem to imply that he was meant to be an artificial life form, in the Frankenstein Monster style. The final chapters are completely melodramatic in the best sense, often the best setting for the bronze man. Doc climbing the huge Perisphere in a thunderstorm, lightning crashing around him, as he pursues a maniac who's shooting at him... that's Pulp.

Bogart's early writing is marked by the use of a shouted sentence in italics at dramatic moments, something which should be used sparingly. He has a good feel for Doc's continuity (as editor, he should have), and minor goofs like having Doc carrying a superfirer on him are excusable.

The nature of hypnotism is badly misunderstood here, and Bogart (like Harold Davis) seems to think of it as a telepathic control exerted from one mind over another. At one point, Doc is in a struggle of wills to maintain hypnotic control of Maximus. It reads like a sci-fi story with two real telepaths struggling over a victim. On the other hand, there is a very cool moment when a gunman forces Doc to hypnotize a surgeon. Doc begins his mesmeric procedures carefully, builds up to a certain point and then suddenly commands, "Drop that gun!" Doc has hypnotized the villain who was watching him. That's our boy!

A cute little blonde suspect discovers a way to get out of Doc's grip. "I suppose if you want to make love to me, I can't help it," she snaps. He promptly lets go and turns a bit red.

Pat Savage has her most disappointing adventure, being promptly tied up almost as soon as she appears and staying that way. Monk and Ham are their usual selves, Habeas and Chemistry contribute nothing of value, but Long Tom has a few good moments as he figures out what's going on.

The World's Fair Goblin himself, Maximus, is an eight foot brute with coarse red hair and a vacant, brain-dead stare. He is strong enough to manhandle both Monk and Long Tom (seperately) but like the Sargasso Ogre and other formidable opponents, he doesn't get a showdown with Doc. Lester Dent for some reason usually skipped final battles between the bronze man and suitable foes; maybe he thought it was too obvious. Maximus does not get enough time on stage to suit me, and the explanation of his origin seems pretty hard to take. I'd like to know what ever happened to him after the events of this story.

The 1939 World's Fair is described and used as a setting, but it somehow doesn't quite spark into life. Maybe Bogart's writing skill wasn't up to that yet; he and Dent toured the grounds while construction was still going on and this book must have been written before it opened. So they hadn't felt the full experience of the Fair. But to have read this issue in 1939 after just having come back from the World's Fair, having just seen the Perisphere and Trylon firsthand, must have been a real rush.

Fans who have seen the cover of the Bantam reprint are almost certain to agree it's one of James Bama's best and a good choice for a poster or high quality print. Against the background of the Trylon and Perisphere (with the ominous figure of Maximus lurking there), Doc is in a heroic pose with incredibly dramatic lighting and coloring provided by the yellow and blue fireworks in the night sky. If anyone remembers the classic covers Basil Gogos painted for FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, this paperback will ring a pleasant bell.

THE GOLD OGRE (July 9, 2004) CLUNKER WARNING Seriously. This May 1939 story isn`t so unbearably awful that it can`t be read, but it is awful lame. This is the book where Doc allows four teenage boys (about 15 or 16, I`d guess) to join him on the case. Not only does he let unarmed unaccompanied minors trail dangerous criminals and get into situations where they are likely to be killed, Doc actually encourages it. In fact, at the end, the four kids ask if they can join him on a future adventure. "Somewhat to his own surprise, the bronze man discovered he was not averse to the idea.... 'We`ll see,' Doc Savage said. 'It might be managed.' " Holy Cow! Let's see what,if any justification, we can come up with to explain our hero`s actions here. Well, of course, both Doc himself and thousands of other Americans had lied about their age to enlist during World War I; so he might be sympathetic to these kids wanting to participate (especially since one of the four is trying to rescue his father). Also, teenagers seem to have been treated pretty much as adults in this era; the boys have no trouble hailing taxis or buying a car with money Doc provides (ah, the days before endless paperwork and computer checks!) and driving off with it minutes later. The whole notion of kid sidekicks has seemed bizarre from day one. Robin, Bucky, Sandy, Speedy, Kitten, Dusty, Tim... the comics of the 1940s were full of junior high students putting on costumes and going after gunmen and enemy soldiers. Only on rare occasions did their adult pals seem to realize how criminally negligent this practice was ("You rats! You hurt that boy and you`ll answer to me!") especially since the sidekicks usually didn`t have any superpowers or special gadgets to compensate. Okay, even if we just shrug and agree this was a literary convention of the time (like the ethnic nicknames), the four chums in this story are just not interesting or likeable at all. Pulp adventures usually featured broad, simple characterizations so that the stories could concentrate on action and secondary characters. This is fine; if you want detailed subtle exploration of personality, there are many fine mainstream writers to choose from. But the four kids in this story are just a single dialogue hook and a vague visual description. One boy is obssessed with making money, and no matter what anyone says, his immediate remark involves cashing in on it. Another one (the fat kid of the bunch, "a roly-poly joy boy without a care in life") contributes puns and jokes that have to be deliberately bad; Lester Dent was often very funny in his dialogue and asides, and he could have made this kid amusing if he had wanted to. (And a teenage boy who constantly jokes and overeats sure sounds like a kid with real unhappiness just under the surface.) Then there is a pseudo-intellectual boy (who resembles a young Abe Lincoln) who offers unspeakably awful slogans and attempts at greeting card-level philosophy. His nickname is 'Mental', and while in 1939 this might have been considered a compliment, today it has a different connotation. The boy IS Mental, all right. The leader of the gang, Don Worth, is evidently a Doc surrogate. He`s a big, muscular jock who is extremely serious-minded, sober, industrious and boring as hell. (To give him credit, when Doc is believed to be killed, it`s Don who comes up with the idea to have ham radio operators track down Monk and Ham on their vacation.) Well, there you have them. The 'Gold Ogre Gang'. Reportedly, editors at Street & Smith were interested in launching a series about teenage detectives (and why not? The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew had long and profitable careers), but this one story was as far as the idea got. Truthfully, I`d much rather have Patricia Savage turn up as a guest star than Mental Parker or Funny Tucker. Oh yes, almost forgot the story. It`s a workable premise that has been used many times to good effect. In a small city near the Great Lakes, citizens are being kidnapped by (wait for it) miniature cavemen with golden skin and big spiked clubs (actually, there are a bunch of gold ogres, despite the book title.) When the victims are released, they are subject to fits of murderous rage they can`t explain. Quickly enough, the whole town is in an uproar as bad as having a political convention in town. People are leaving the area in all directions to avoid being abducted or catching the strange plague. What makes it genuinely creepy is that the local capitalist tyrant and miser, Marcus Gild, used to have a collection of small gold caveman statues... and they`ve disappeared. You don`t think....? Of course, the series of bizarre events has a mundane explanation, as was usually the case in a Doc Savage story. The crooks seem to be go to an incredible amount of trouble to carry out their elaborate hoax; no matter how much money they expect to net, there had to be simpler ways to go about it. Dent seems to be deliberately writing down in this story, evidently trying to lure in readers younger than his projected fourteen year old audience. There is a good deal of simple repeitition and explanation. I also noticed that a chapter after he use his last remaining smoke bomb, Doc blithely throws another one and normally details like that don't bother me.... a sure sign the story isn't giving me enough suspense or surprises. Even burdened with the kid gang, this story could have been much more tense and exciing than it turned out. On the other hand, if you liked the juvenile series books like Bomba or the Boy Allies (or comic series like the Newsboy Legion), you might enjoy THE GOLD OGRE more than the normal Doc book.

THE FLAMING FALCONS (Sep 3, 2001) From June 1939, this adventure is only fair. It has all the right ingredients but there is no enthusiasm in the writing. Lester Dent seems pretty tired of the characters. It's a quarter of a way into the story before Doc actually appears; Dent seems to be having more fun with the snappy dialogue and prickly relationship between the two surrogate heroes. Hobo Jones and Fiesta Robertson are young, uninhibited and free to go in any direction. You feel like the author would just as soon have them explore the mystery without the crew from the 86th floor showing up. The opening scenes are a good example of how to lay out clues to what's going on without giving too much away. A field of very sticky, vile-tasting melons; a well-equipped hut inside a haystack, complete with its own generator; a naked Asian man with black teeth in the middle of Arizona; and a sassy teen-age beauty who whacks the vagrant Hobo Jones over the head with a walking-stick cactus. All this and then the flaming falcons themselves. The mysterious menace is actually pretty intriguing: goat-sized gray birds that stalk people and abruptly burst into white-hot flame. The birds and most of their victims's bodies are consumed in the fires, and these raptors are hard to ignore when they abruptly appear from time to time. Long-time Doc fans will suspect a logical, reasonable explanation for the deadly birds but they're still creepy. When Fiesta tries to escape one in her barely-running $19 jalopy, there's some real suspense. Monk and Ham (with their pets) are their usual selves with no significant revelations. Doc himself appears more enigmatic and withdrawn than usual, going about his business as though his mind is somewhere else. Maybe he had another mystery underway at the same time. It's somehow unsettling that when he dives underwater to escape the fiery birds, the bronze man stays down for hours waiting until dark. He even admits he sort of over-reacted to the threat, but it seems he just erred on the side of too much caution rather than not enough. The gadgets are in full bloom in this story, and we see ordinary people reacting to the invisible chalk, odorless gas, tiny radios and so forth. Doc's worldwide organization of graduates from the Crime College is put to use, watching hundreds of airports, railroad stations and hotels at one point. These people drop what they're doing and carry out Doc's instructions when he needs them, and you have to wonder what their co-workers and friends think of this. Doc borders on being sinister with the way he uses the former killers whose memories he has rewritten; I would be more comfortable if he simply hired part-time investigators and detectives he would keep on retainer. The cover to the original pulp magazine is horrifying enough. It shows Doc peering into an ocean liner stateroom. Inside, a man either dead or dying, and behind him is perched a big, gray, nasty-looking bird. it seems more a vulture than a falcon. In contrast, Bama's cover to the Bantam reprint is actually attractive. Doc is shown crouching on some stone ruins, while three nicely-rendered falcons (almost as big as Doc) shimmer with orange-gold auras. Two very different approaches.