Doc Savage: The Devil Genghis by Lester Dent writing as Kenneth Robeson - Book Review #326

 

The Sequel to Fortress of Solitude.  John Sunlight has returned to conquer the world and defeat Doc!

I was happy with this story.  It relied on the reader being familiar with the previous story.  This was the first time an antagonist came back to haunt Doc's team.

I was happy that the other two characters, absent in the previous story, played an important part in this adventure.

I felt like I was reading a James Bond thriller, with all the travelling to distant places.

The story was great fun, especially how I could see the connections from this series to so many of the other franchises that are still around and based on this kind of story telling. 

The Doc Savage books are not terribly hard to find.  They were reproduced in paperbacks in the 1960's, 70's and 80's.  They can be found in used bookstores and on line easily enough.

Doc Savage: Fortress of Solitude by Lester Dent writing as Kenneth Robeson - Book Review #324

Back in 2006, a publisher called Nostalgia Ventures, Inc., created beautiful reproductions of the old pulp era adventures of Doc Savage.

Doc was the original template of our "modern" heroes Batman and Superman.  Indiana Jones is very much in keeping with Doc Savage.

I purchased lots of the magazines for a few years then drifted off.  I blew the dust off the books recently and picked up issue #1 which contains two "complete book-length novels," Fortress of Solitude and The Devil Genghis.

It was an interesting place to start a new publication of reprints.  I would have expected Will Murray, the consulting editor of the series, to start at the beginning.  Instead he chose these two stories, #68 and #70, when the series was well established.

John Sunlight, the antagonist of the books, marked a departure in the series.  It was the first time Doc suffered the bad guy to get away.

In Fortress of Solitude, John Sunlight stumbles upon Doc's secret hideaway.  Once he makes his way inside, he takes advantage of all the technology within for his own purposes. 

Up to this point the Fortress has not been revealed to the readers, only that Doc occasionally went there to think, learn, and train. 

The beauty of the Doc Savage books is that you need not read them in order.  Each story is self contained and the Doc Savage universe is explained in each installment with the first time reader in mind. 

That is, except for these two.