A superhuman god springs from mythology to terrorize and destroy. Those who cross its malevolent path also discover a quick way to die. Doc Savage and his crew set out to stop this ancient evil, and just as Doc closes in -- he's face to face with a silver-haired Adonis!

The Whisker of Hercules is by no means the best Doc. But it is a good read, especially for one of the later books. It isn't a Doc-as-nervous-nelly spy novel, but more like the originals. it features a strong, almost superhuman Doc in a domestic rush to stop a crimewave with a fantastic new "Hercules" aspect. This is a biochem type threat, involving a substance that actually speeds up the user's metabolism and makes them physiologically extreme in all aspects, which they call being like "Hercules." There are some great scenes featuring these "Hercules" feats of wonder (think men flying 30 feet in the air and cars being wrapped around trees) and they blow even a pghysical marvel like Doc out of the water.

Some nice moments: Renny takes out a door with his fist and it is like using a 16-pound sledge hammer. In another scene when a Hercules-crook manhandles him, Renny is injured with a dislocated arm and massive handprint bruises on his arm. But when Doc resets the arm right afterwards, Renny never utters a word or cries out, he just begins sweating. These men are tough as nails. Likewise in toughness is Monk. He corners a man while searching for a missing girl and say, "Do you know me?" "No, sir." "Take a close look at me and decide what you see." The other was growing puzzled. "I don't know you." "Maybe not," Monk said, "but you should recognize in me a fellow who is liable to take an arm off you and slap yopu with it if you don't trot that girl right out." Ahhh, you have to love that homely ape. He can scare a man from across a busy stret. Later when Monk is shot pointblank in the stomach with a shotgun, Ham gets frantic. After Monk is known to have survived and is complaining about having a ruptured spleen, Ham starts ribbing him instantly about always keeping his spleen emptied on Ham, so it couldn't be serious. Even later it says they always fight in bad situations to let of steam and relax. It's how they handle the extreme adventures. That's the boys back in great form. Elsewhere, Doc dodges a thrown knife so fast it appears to go through his body. This is Doc and gang operating like they used to in the golden years.

Also about Doc, in this book he has returned to his "nemesis of evil" self and reputation. Several times in the book villians are terrified by the mere mention of his name. One crook at the beginning gets violently ill to his stomach when he hears Doc's name mentioned. Later (Bantam p 60) comes the strongest possible statement of Doc's power as criminals flee a scene by crawling underwater along the muddy bottom of a lake when he arrives on shore: But the fear of Doc Savage was greater than any other fear, and they lined out and got going.

WOW! So, though this is a 1944 war years book, we're reading the original heroic and vibrant Doc Savage. A lot of fun and a welcome reprieve from those faltering years of doubt.

Thomas Fortenberry

The Whisker of Hercules, as Thomas Fortenberry suggests, is a good, if not great, latter-day Doc Savage novel. I found it fast-paced and quite gripping and Doc really does shine in this one. Dent never lost sight of the importance of "weird science" in the Doc Savage novels and this book retains a lot of that Doc Savage magic that keeps those of us who are fans reading years and years after the Bantam series came out.