Founded the Hidalgo Trading Company (1997) and The Flearun Discussion Group (1999). Chuck currently serves as Editor for the Bronze Gazette.
(The Doc Savage novel synopsis are courtesy of Bantam Books or Altus Press.)
This didn’t seem like a Doc Savage novel. I found this Doc closer to Chandler’s Marlowe.
And that’a good thing. Sure, Clark Savage, Jr. P.I. isn’t as exciting as “The Man of Bronze,” but the myster jholds up and the twists and turns are plausible.
Fans of the crew will be disappointed though. The only two who show up — Monk and Ham — are barely involved in the story.
Nevertheless, coming on the heels of my last read — The Derelict of Skull Shoal — my faith is renewed in Lester Dent.
Todd Pence
on November 24, 2004 at 7:49 pm
Chuck is right. This one doesn’t read like a Doc Savage novel at all, and Doc seems oddly out of character in several places. I wonder if this was a story that Dent originally wrote for another character and then reworked into a Doc Savage novel.
Tim Bateman
on March 20, 2005 at 7:02 pm
I read this one a few years ago now, and recall liking it – one of those low-key postwar Docs of which I am really rather fond. I do seem to recall reading somewhere that this is a re-written Dent story originally without Doc – a detective novel Dent was for whatever reason unable to place.
There’s another Lester Dent innovation about fifty years ahead of the rest of the world – recycling!
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This didn’t seem like a Doc Savage novel. I found this Doc closer to Chandler’s Marlowe.
And that’a good thing. Sure, Clark Savage, Jr. P.I. isn’t as exciting as “The Man of Bronze,” but the myster jholds up and the twists and turns are plausible.
Fans of the crew will be disappointed though. The only two who show up — Monk and Ham — are barely involved in the story.
Nevertheless, coming on the heels of my last read — The Derelict of Skull Shoal — my faith is renewed in Lester Dent.
Chuck is right. This one doesn’t read like a Doc Savage novel at all, and Doc seems oddly out of character in several places. I wonder if this was a story that Dent originally wrote for another character and then reworked into a Doc Savage novel.
I read this one a few years ago now, and recall liking it – one of those low-key postwar Docs of which I am really rather fond. I do seem to recall reading somewhere that this is a re-written Dent story originally without Doc – a detective novel Dent was for whatever reason unable to place.
There’s another Lester Dent innovation about fifty years ahead of the rest of the world – recycling!