Yeah, I had this one figured out quickly, but hey, any book that has Doc Savage performing brain surgery in a Louisiana swamp? Shit, that's gotta count for something, right?

These books are so cheesy, you just have to love them. Well, I do. ( )

Doc Savage's third published adventure was written roughly ninety years ago, resulting in some unusual aspects of this story that might not have aged well.

As with many of Doc's adventures, this one involves him and the boys infiltrating a criminal organization threatening a large number of people. In this case, it's a Voodoo Swamp Cult that is taking over lumber mills and selling of their assets for cash. Weird, huh? A couple of other things that stand out:

*Doc Savage stacking unconscious bad guys like cordwood in a nearby hotel so he can later enroll them in his brainwashing clinic to be turned into decent law-abiding citizens.

*There is an unfortunate instance - with no apologies - in which Doc Savage dresses Johnny up like a swamp cult voodoo preacher, complete with blackface.

*There is A LOT of ejaculating going on in this book.

"Golly!" ejaculated Big Eric, staring at the plane which was being rolled into view.

"Bien!" he ejaculated. "Keel heem both!

"Yo' gat heem, huh?" ejaculated the leader of the gang.

"Holy smoke!" Johnny ejaculated. [In blackface]

"Bien!" ejaculated Johnny, imitating the conglomerate dialect of the swamp men.

"Bien!" ejaculated Johnny, lapsing into the conglomerate swamp dialect. [Johnny does a lot of ejaculating while in blackface]

"Bien!" ejaculated Buck Boontown.

It might sound juvenile, but I challenge that anybody reading a contemporary novel with this much ejaculating would at least raise an eyebrow.

*The voodoo swamp cult is known as the Cult of the Moccasin. So what kind of name would you give a voodoo priest leading a swamp cult names after a snake? That's right, the Gray Spider. Why is an arachnid ruling a snake cult? Only Doc knows.

*When they reveal the secret identity of the Gray Spider, it (obviously) turns out to be somebody they already met but would never suspect, but then no time is explaining, or even trying to understand, why or how they ended up leading a voodoo swamp cult.

*This one's a deal breaker for me. There's always a willing suspension of disbelief when reading Doc Savage novels, and I'm more than willing to believe that Doc is the amazing superman that can out-perform anybody, mind or body. However... later chapters in the book describe a large alligator crawling around the voodoo swamp cult hideout where Monk, Ham, and Johnny are being held prisoner. The alligator wandering around the hideout, and eventually let into the boys' cell to scare them, turns out to be DOC SAVAGE IN AN ALLIGATOR SUIT. Nope. That's where you lose me. Dinosaurs on a secret island? No problem. The massive frame of The Man of Bronze crawling around in an alligator costume successfully fooling everybody? Nope. Sorry, Doc.

Overall, this entry in the Doc Savage series was less interesting than the previous two, possibly due to its mix of the repeated (secret cult) and the mundane (robbing sawmills). ( )

5/1933 Quest of the Spider (Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, Johnny) (New York, Louisiana)
Publishing #3 Bantam #68

The third outing for Doc and crew departs is the first to depart from the formula of having the action start in New York then in the second half move to an exotic location. Although the action starts enroute to New York within 3 chapters Doc and Ham are headed towards New Orleans. This adventure relies not on an exotic location so much as an exotic idea. The action takes place mainly in the swamps of Louisiana among the lumber mills there. Thinking about the logging industry here in California, it would be novel to most city readers at the time but as a reader in the 21st century it doesn’t scream exotic. Dent does play the voodoo. At the time of writing, Voodoo was a topic with little or no investigation. Zora Neale Hurston”s Tell My Horse wouldn’t not be published until 1938. So it’s safe to say that Dent's exposure would have been other popular culture depictions of it and the assumption that the followers were easily duped native types.

The adventure itself is a fun romp with a still lethal Doc in play. I wouldn’t say he is bloodthirsty but there are parts of the novel where for expediency sake, Doc uses lethal methods over subduing his opponents. This is the adventure with the infamous stuffed alligator suit. Far be it for me to explain anything more and ruin the fun. In reflecting on this particular adventure and the nature of some of the others I’ve read over the years, I wonder if the original writers of Scooby Doo were influenced by big reveals at the end of Doc adventures. I give credit to Dent that he had me guessing for half the book but then I remembered his formula which took a little fun out of the big reveal. This is the first story to have the villain wear a costume to hide his identity hence the Scooby Doo reference. And no it wasn’t the groundskeeper.

Dent also delves into the theme of Doc being oblivious or uneasy around pretty women with having Edna Danielson fall for Doc. Our first introduction to Doc’s problems with women being Princess Monja. Good story but has a different feel with the domestic setting. As I’m reading I wonder if Dent is more comfortable writing the domestic settings hence the move away from New York early in the book. Where Dent might write more about the New York settings when he has to stray further afield as the adventure progresses. ( )

A vicious mastermind called The Gray Spider is taking over the lumber industry in the South. His current target is an old friend of Ham's, so of course this friend and his daughter seek out Ham and his friends to hopefully enlist the aid of their friend and benefactor, the one and only Doc Savage!

It's action from the word go as Big Eric and his daughter are nearly killed by one of the Gray Spider's agents on their plane, the whole thing made to look like a terrible accident. Once Doc is on board, things just get more and more interesting. Poison gas, evil swamp men, voodoo cult worship, and killer flies. All in a day's work for Doc and his team.

This is pulp at its best! A fun read, even though some of the dialogue coming from Doc and his aids didn't feel quite right. ( )