Customer Reviews

Doc Savage #16: The Spook Legion

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As a fan of Doc Savage, I consider myself fortunate to have collected all of the Bantam Paperback reprints of the original 181 Doc Savage Magazines. Written by Lester Dent, under the pen name of Kenneth Robeson, the pulp magazine was published as a monthly beginning in 1933 to 1949. (For the last few years it was a quarterly.) In 1964, Bantam began their series of paperbacks, which ran for 26 years. As time allows, I will give brief descriptions/reviews of the entire series. In book # 16, "The Spook Legion," Doc continues in the realm of science fiction that began in the previous book, in which a series of mysterious things happen, with no rationale explanations given. Previously, all the phenomena that happened were logically explained at the end of each book, but not here. In this adventure, Doc and only two of his associates (Monk and Ham) take on a group of invisible men. This is also a departure from the series, as for the first time the other three of Doc's cohorts (Renny, Long Tom and Brooks) appear nowhere in the tale. The evil mastermind, working under a skunk farm on Long Island, has found a way to turn men invisible. Their crime wave begins at a New York opera house where the invisibles roam the audience taking precious jewelry and striking terror everywhere. These plotters soon have police and citizens convinced that it is Doc and his gang that are the perpetrators. It is continual, excessively repeated action throughout until Doc and Monk themselves become invisible, infiltrate the gang, and bring about justice. How does Robeson/Savage explain the invisibility? Well as Doc says, "It has something to do with altering the electronic composition of the body, securing an atomic motific status which results in complete diaphaneity." Huh? Not one of the best of the series by a long shot.