It started with a senseless murder. Then it spread -- all over New York men were becoming robot-like automatons without emotions. The Man of Bronze went into action. But even Doc Savage was stricken helpless before he solved the terrifying menace of The Death's Head Grin!

I just finished this one and I must say that it is one of the best! The best word to describe this adventure is: relentless. This one moves like a rocket! Twists and turns! And, you get to see Monk, Ham and the rest of the fabulous five like you've never seen them before. Doc's internal battle against the 'creeping inertia' in his nervous system alone makes this one worth reading. One of Doc's best scenes without a doubt. From opening sentence to the last line this one just never stops! Great fun!!

This was NOT one of my favorites. Partly because it was not a Lester Dent tale, but also because the "brain dead killers" was overused in the series. (The Mindless Monsters, & The Munitions Master, to name two).

It's astonishing that anyone could actually like this Laurence Donovan adventure, but I guess that's the interesting thing about taste. No offense to those who liked it, but "The Men Who Smiled No More" is absolutely awful. Donovan wrote nine Docs and the only one that could actually be called good was "Cold Death." I find Donovan's prose an almost incredible chore to read. His writing is like a refrigerator magnet poetry game a friend had, in which you mix and match phrases and words to try to make a coherent sentence. This is not as bad as say, "Murder Melody", but it's pretty close. Most of the adventure is spent near a duck pond; not my choice for an exciting setting.

This gets my vote for the absolute worst Donovan Doc ever, maybe even the worst book of the series. It's virtually unreadable and the disgustingly gruesome duck killing scenes were just horrible. The writing is terrible. I refer to this one as The Ducks Who Quacked No More...

Loved the cover; hated the book.