Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage #26

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APRIL 1935 - THE SPOOK LEGION

Here is another science fiction Doc Savage novel, this one written by Lester Dent. In The Spook Legion, a criminal genius has perfected a technique for rendering people invisible and is using it to unleash a crime wave upon Manhattan.

Doc and Monk get in on the fun and are made invisible very early in the novel. The Spook Legion cleverly gets Doc pegged as the mastermind early on and it causes Doc, Monk, and Ham no end of trouble.

Dent has a bit of fun as Doc and Monk are cavorting about New York completely naked for much of the book. It leads to a few awkward moments.

Monk utters the title of the novel in a bit of dialog, which was nice and this story also reveals a secret entrance to Doc's 86th floor headquarters via a secret ladder on the 85th floor.

The gang successfully pulls off the crime wave and all New York is on the lookout for the invisible gang. They are going to pull up stakes and head to Chicago next, if Doc can't stop them.

Well, what do you think happened?

For this review I read my quite beat up Bantam paperback #16, published March, 1967. I guess I bought it used as Carey Champoux wrote his name on the inside of both the front and back covers.

I give The Spook Legion an 9 out of 10. This is one of "the good ones." Having the rest of the Fab Five absent allows Dent to give full support time to Monk and Ham. Even Habias (Monk's pig) has a good role in this one. The pulp cover by Walter Baumhofer is quite famous as it was used for the cover of Philip Jose Farmer's biography, "Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life." The Bantam cover is by James Bama. 

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Pulp of the Week - The Invisible Man

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The Invisible Man
By H.G. Wells, 1897

This is a fascinating book, a riveting read, and a hell of a story. Wells has thought through the ramifications and consequences of being an invisible man brilliantly.

The story follows Griffin, a former medical student who switched to physics and became obsessed with optics and reflection and refraction. What lesses them and what would happen if they were eliminated altogether. He worked and suffered years of poverty and solitude in his pursuit of achieving invisibility.

He finally came upon the process after many years. There is no magic potion, no elixer or shot, it was a process, a series of drugs and therapies and treatments to finally achieve transparency and the elimination of refraction and reflection.

The tale follows Griffins path of destruction as he checks into an out of the way inn on a dreary February day. He is short-tempered and tired. A few days pass and the questions and suspicions escalate and Griffin panics and the story enters its middle section where the English countryside is terrorize by a maniacal invisible man.

The finale is terrifying and sad. Wells writes in such a manner of fact and solid way, as if this is a recounting of the events of the time that has just passed. While he does not employ the use of first person, he does use accounts of events in a reporter like fashion to good effect. After all the invisible man movies that I have seen it was a pleasure to read the real thing. Apart from a bit of a dated style, The Invisible Man holds up really well.

I give the Invisible Man by H. G. Wells a 9 out of 10. I can't wait to read War of the Worlds and many of his other books.

For this review I read the Project Gutenberg ebook. Project Gutenberg is a free ebook collection of public domain works.