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May, 1935 - The Secret in the Sky
This is good quality Doc Savage adventure from the mid 1930s where Doc and crew encounter another scientific marvel that has been co-opted for nefarious purposes. For some reason, using superscience in the pursuit of criminal thievery is what is on the mind of every criminal mastermind in the 1930s.
In this supersaga, the invention is a spherical flying craft that can hover, take off vertically, and whiz across the country in around 2 hours.
It is that last aspect that gets Doc's attention at the start of the book. An acquaintance of Docs' is publicly killed in San Francisco and two hours later his body is found in New York.
It is that last aspect that gets Doc's attention at the start of the book. An acquaintance of Docs' is publicly killed in San Francisco and two hours later his body is found in New York.
Doc, Monk, Habius, and Ham again share the bulk of the action, but at least this time Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny are present. The capable woman is present again in the form of Lanca Jaxon, although she is a reduced presence from the usual.
The flying spheres are quite mysterious and Doc never does get a good look at the innards of them before they are destroyed.
For this review, I read my quite battered Bantam paperback - Nov 1967 - 3rd printing. I'll give The Secret in the Sky a 7.5 out of 10. My main criticism of these stories is that the set-ups are great, but the resolutions are rushed. The Paul Orban interior art presented is from Chris Kalb's Doc Savage fan site, The 86th Floor. The pulp cover is by Walter Baumhofer and the Bantam paperback cover is by James Bama.
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