Doc Savage 5 - Pirate of the Pacific

Pirate of the Pacific, published in 1933, is the fifth of the Doc Savage novels. It was written by Lester Dent.

Doc Savage is a superhero of a kind but he has no superhuman powers. He has simply developed his own physical, psychological and intellectual powers to an extraordinary degree. He is a scientist and inventor and is fabulously wealthy. He uses his wealth and his physical and intellectual capabilities to fight crime and injustice everywhere.

The major flaw of the Doc Savage stories is that Doc is much too perfect. He never makes mistakes. He never fails to foresee danger. He does not even have a few minor weaknesses that might make him seem human.

His five assistants are not quite as perfect, but almost.

The previous book in the series, The Polar Treasure, had taken Doc Savage and his friends to the Arctic in a super-advanced submarine. On their arrival home they are bombed from the air. And they discover that they now have pirates to deal with.

Piracy was rife in the South China Sea at that time but Tom Too is more than just an ordinary pirate. He has much grander ambitions. He wants his own country. He is plotting to take over the Luzon Union (we’re clearly talking about the Philippines here). Tom Too controls a huge pirate fleet ad a vast army of cutthroats. He is very much a megalomaniac and an evil genius and a Super Villain.

Juan Mindoro has asked Doc for help. Mindoro runs a secret society in the Luzon Union but his secret society is not sinister. He’s one of the good guys.

Tom Too’s influence even extends to New York where his henchmen murder one of Mindoro’s old friends and associates.

Tom Too’s organisation is gunning for Doc Savage as well.

Doc and his buddies head for the Luzon Union upon aboard the passenger liner Malay Queen. It’s a voyage marked by non-stop mayhem.

Tom Too’s tentacles are everywhere. Almost anyone could be one of Tom Too’s agents.

Doc’s buddies keep getting captured by the bad guy but Doc is never dismayed.

Doc has a number of non-lethal weapons at his disposal. He prefers to capture bad guys alive. They are sent to an institute that Doc funds where they are reprogrammed to be useful law-abiding citizens. Yes, perhaps a bit Clockwork Orange-y. It is an early example of the interest in brainwashing and mind control that became more and more of a feature of pop culture and reached a fairly spectacular lowering in the 60s. It’s intriguing to see these elements, which would increasingly be the province of fictional bad guys, being used here by the good guy.

It should be assumed that Doc’s methods are entirely non-lethal. He isn’t one of those moralistic superheroes who won’t kill. He doesn’t in the least mind killing bad guys if he has to and he and his crew never go anywhere without a supply of machineguns and grenades.

Interestingly I don’t recall a single female character in this book. Not even a very minor female character.

Pirate of the Pacific is breathtakingly politically incorrect and those who enjoy being offended will have a field day.

One thing you have to say about Lester Dent - he understood that pulp action adventure is all about action. And the pacing doesn’t flag for a moment.

Pirate of the Pacific has zero subtlety and complexity but it’s excellent pulp fun and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed two of the earlier Doc Savage books, The Polar Treasure and Land of Terror.

Peter Cheyney's Poison Ivy

Between 1936 and 1951 Englishman Peter Cheyney enjoyed great success with his pulp thrillers in the American style. He had never been to America but that didn’t worry him. He knew the America that mattered to his readers - the America of the movies and the pulps. Some of Cheyney’s books are set in the United States but some are not. They do however all have an American-style hardboiled pulp flavour.

His best-known series characters were private detective Slim Callaghan and FBI agent Lemmy Caution. Lemmy Caution was immortalised in a wonderful series of French movies in the 1950s and early 60s with the great Eddie Constantine in the title role.

Poison Ivy, published in 1937, was the second Lemmy Caution novel.

Lemmy is investigating a plot involving gold. The FBI have very little hard information but it appears that there may be an attempt to steal a shipment of gold bullion. What’s worrying is that three FBI agents assigned to the case have already been murdered. And while Lemmy is waiting to make a contact in a night-club a fourth G-Man is slain. Lemmy is going to be up against some very dangerous opponents.

At the night club he sees Carlotta for the first time. She’s the singer. She’s a whole lot of woman. Lemmy has encountered some swell-looking dames in his time but Carlotta is in a league of her own. And swell-looking dames just happen to be one of Lemmy’s hobbies. He later finds out that her nickname is Poison Ivy.

Of more immediate concern is the presence of two corpses in the night club. One is a G-Man. The other is Willie the Goop. Carlotta was Willie’s girl, or at least that’s what Willie thought. Rudy Saltieri had other ideas. Rudy is a mobster and a particularly dangerous and ruthless example of the breed.

Lemmy has some ideas about the identity of Willie’s slayer. His favoured suspect has an alibi but Lemmy figures the alibi is not going to stand up. He has an instinct for such things.

Lemmy has a rough time on this case. He gets beaten up several times and he gets kidnapped. In fairness to Lemmy he hands out quite a bit of punishment to the bad guys along the way. There’s always plenty of action in a Lemmy Caution story. Lemmy is handy with a gun but he’s even handier with his fists. And Lemmy figures that while it’s a good thing to persuade a suspect to co-operate it’s a lot easier to do so if you knock seven daylights out of the guy first.

This is of course a heist story and it’s a pretty clever heist. The rather neat plot involves yachts, trains and a séance. And plenty of twists and double-crosses.

And dames. Two very seductive dames. They’re probably not nice girls but bad girls tend to make a case a lot more interesting.

Lemmy finds plenty of opportunities to trade wisecracks with the villains and to engage in some erotically-tinged verbal sparring with both the dames. Lemmy is as quick with a wisecrack as he is with his Luger automatic.

Lemmy is a bit of a rogue and he’s more than a little rough around the edges but he’s a likeable hero.

I have serious doubts as to whether Cheyney got all the American slang right but I am sure that he didn’t care. If your book has plenty of action and the right overall flavour there’s no need to stress about minor points of accuracy.

Poison Ivy is energetic fast-paced fun and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the excellent French film adaptation, Poison Ivy (1953). I’ve reviewed several of Cheyney’s other Lemmy Caution thrillers - Dames Don’t Care, I’ll Say She Does! and Never a Dull Moment.

William P. McGivern’s The Galaxy Raiders

William P. McGivern’s science fiction novella The Galaxy Raiders appeared in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories in February 1950.

William P. McGivern (1918-1982) was an American writer best-known for his crime fiction but early in his career he wrote science fiction as well.

In 1950 it was not yet generally understood just how hostile and uninviting the other planets in our solar system are. In this book it is assumed that Jupiter is a rocky planet just like the Earth and there’s no mention of the extreme gravity.

Even taking this into account it’s clear that the author’s understanding of scientific subjects was seriously limited. The science in the book is for the most part pure nonsense.

It’s amusing how wildly optimistic science fiction writers were in the 1940s and 1950s. In this story the first manned mission to Jupiter took place in the 1970s! The novel begins eleven years later. Commander Storm had been a member of that first expedition, in the spaceship Astro Star. That mission had been the brainchild of a brilliant scientist, Commander Griffith. Griffith and his family were left behind when the expedition retuned to Earth.

Space exploration had not been a priority then. Now it’s a high priority, due to the looming threat from the mysterious Galaxy X. The Astro Star II is the most advanced spaceship ever built and it’s now on its way to Jupiter.

There is a surprise on board the Astro Star II. Her name is Margo. She’s beautiful and brave and bold but there are not supposed to be any women among the crew. She also has a personal agenda, relating to that earlier expedition.

There are some more surprises in store on Jupiter. Not the least being a vast robot army led by a scantily clad amazon warrior wielding an antique ray gun. Her name is Karen. She’s very very angry.

Commander Storm has other problems - disloyalty within his crew. They don’t believe that the stories about the sinister Galaxy X are true. They believe that Commander Griffith invented those stories.

And that’s when it becomes frighteningly clear that the threat from Galaxy X is very real indeed.

There’s some action, some fairly cool monsters and there are characters with at least slightly complex motivations.

The most interesting thing about this story is Commander Storm. He is very much a flawed hero. He is intelligent, brave, determined and dedicated. He is also a difficult and abrasive man who drives his subordinates too hard and he just does not have that quality that a leader needs - the ability to inspire loyalty and confidence. As far as discipline is concerned he makes mistakes - he is either not strict enough or too strict. He is a driven man and that sometimes clouds his judgment. He creates many of his own problems.

Despite some silly science stuff it’s a reasonably engaging story. It’s not top-tier pulp science fiction but it’s worth a look.

Armchair Fiction have paired this novel with Frank Belknap Long’s Space Station #1 in a two-novel edition.

I’ve also reviewed McGivern’s most famous book, The Big Heat (not bad but sadly not as good as Fritz Lang’s movie adaptation) and his 1944 science fiction novella The Mad Robot.

Robert Tralins' The Miss from S.I.S.

The Miss from S.I.S., published in 1966, is the first of the Miss from S.I.S. spy thrillers by Robert Tralins. It belongs to the “sexy lady spy” sub-genre and that’s definitely the sort of stuff I go for.

Lee Crosley is a travel writer and she’s doing a story on a playboy billionaire and then mayhem erupts in the guy’s penthouse apartment. Explosive mayhem. Literally explosive. This billionaire had a few secrets. Lee is lucky to get out in one piece.

Lee Crosley has a few secrets as well. She’s actually a secret agent, working for S.I.S., an all-female international counter-intelligence agency. That billlionaire’s secrets have a connection with several other cases of rich men who have suffered curious and unexpected fates. S.I.S. suspects there’s a plot afoot with very very high stakes indeed. So high that Lee’s mission has Code One status. That means she is to consider herself expendable. The double 0 number gives Bond a licence to kill, but a Code One gives Lee a licence to get herself killed.

In this case she also has a licence to go to bed with the chief male suspect.

Any self-respecting lady spy will have a few gadgets at her disposal, such as a high-tech girdle and deadly high heels.

The basic setup is good.

The conspiracy in this case is very high level. Very close to the top. And Lee’s cover might not be as air-tight as she’d hoped.

There’s a reasonable amount of action. The plot is sound enough but doesn’t have enough of the outrageous elements required for a really good lighthearted spy romp.

The major weakness is that for a sexy spy thriller it’s just not very sexy. It’s not sexy at all. It’s much much too tame.

The second book in the series, The Chic Chick Spy, is an enormous improvement. It has the essential ingredients that the first book lacks. It also has a lot more energy and much more of a sense of zany fun. It’s a whole lot sexier. I get the feeling that for the second instalment Tralins decided to change direction fairly radically.

Of course there is sometimes doubt about the authorship of pulp novels. Publishers often had several writers all using the same house name. The change of style here is so noticeable that you might suspect that this is such a case but as far as I now Robert Tralins did write all three Miss from S.I.S. novels.

I have yet to read the third book but I have a copy on order.

The Miss from S.I.S. is by no means terrible. It’s a breezy lightweight spy potboiler. It’s just that there are other similar books that do the same sort of thing with a bit more panache. But it’s worth a look.

I’ve also reviewed the second book, The Chic Chick Spy (which I wholeheartedly recommend), as well as a fairly interesting Robert Tralins SF novel, The Cosmozoids.

Fans of sexy lady spies might want to check out some more of my reviews. James Eastwood’s The Chinese Visitor is the first of his Anna Zordan spy novels. Lust, Be a Lady Tonight kicks off The Lady from L.U.S.T. series. And Jimmy Sangster's Touchfeather is a delight. And for fans of sexy spy thrillers in general there’s Clyde Allison's outrageous Gamefinger (Man From Sadisto 6).

Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass

Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, published in 1871, is a sequel to his 1865 classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The full title is Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There but it’s also known as Alice Through the Looking-Glass.

This time young Alice passes through a mirror into the looking-glass world in which everything is back-to-front, but in extremely complex ways. She also finds herself participating in a game of chess, of a sort. She meets chess pieces that have come to life and finds that in this world even time is back-to-front.

Lewis Carroll was of course the pen-name of the great Victorian mathematician and logician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898). Apart from being a charming children’s nonsense book this book is also an extraordinarily clever, devious and intricate set of games with both logic and language.

This is one of those children’s books that really does delight children but it delights adults even more. There are so many layers here that only an adult could appreciate.

Alice finds herself in a world in which logic is turned on its head to create nonsense but the nonsense is in its own way strictly logical. Bizarre games are played with language but again the nonsense that results from this does actually follow logical rules. If you push logic far enough it becomes both logical and illogical.

And Alice’s adventure in the looking-glass world is a game of chess, of sorts.

The games played with time are amusing and on the surface silly but it fact they’re the sorts of games you’ll find in serious works of science fiction. Through the Looking-Glass is a children’s fantasy book but it really is a science fiction novel as well.

The book includes several of Lewis Carroll’s best-known poems, such as Jabberwocky. He had a knack for writing nonsense verse that isn’t mere gibberish. It actually hangs together as a poem. He’s playing games with words and sounds and names but they’re not purely random games. Everything in this novel is intricately thought out.

Mirrors and mirror images and pairs recur throughout the story.

The character of Alice may have been based very loosely on Alice Liddell, or perhaps one of her sisters. The original version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was written to entertain the girls but Dodgson quickly realised that the story had commercial potential and the heroine’s character may have been altered somewhat to enhance the story.

It is important not to try to analyse this book in terms of anachronistic modern literary theories or ideologies. It’s also important not to try to impose silly Freudian readings on to it, Freudianism being much greater nonsense than anything Dodgson comes up with in the novel with the difference that Dodgson’s nonsense stuff at least obeys logical rules.

That’s not to say that this is a mere child’s tale. There’s clearly plenty of symbolism, but it’s not Freudian symbolism (or Jungian symbolism). Dodgson was a product of the 19th century. As an educated man he obviously had a familiarity with classical literature and mythology. And he was a High Church Anglican. And a mathematician. If such a man wanted to add symbolism to his story these are the sources on which he would have drawn.

Both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are must-read books, in fact they’re among the greatest treasures of English literature. They revolutionised children’s literature but they are much more more than children’s books. Very highly recommended.

The very cheap Wordsworth Classics paperback edition includes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as well, and the wonderful original illustrations by John Tenniel.

James Hadley Chase’s Lay Her Among the Lilies

Lay Her Among the Lilies, published in 1950, was the third of James Hadley Chase’s thrillers featuring private detective Vic Malloy.

James Hadley Chase (1906-1985) was an immensely successful English writer of crime thrillers. He wrote around 90 novels. Most were set in the United States although Chase only ever made two brief visits to that country. He relied on maps and dictionaries of American slang to achieve the desired flavour.

The setting is Orchid City, a fictional city in southern California.

Vic Malloy (along with his partners Paula Bensinger and Jack Kerman) runs an agency called Universal Services. It’s basically a private detective agency but they will take all kinds of other assorted jobs.

Vic’s latest client is dead. She’s been dead for quite a while. In the pocket of a trench coat he hasn’t worn for a long time he finds a letter that he had received but had forgotten to open, and in fact he had forgotten that the letter existed. The letter is from a rich young woman named Janet Crosby. She wants Malloy to find out if someone is blackmailing her sister Maureen. She has enclosed five hundred dollars as a retainer. The letter was sent fourteen months ago. The difficulty is that Janet Crosby died on the very day the letter was sent.

Vic could simply return the money to her estate. He has a better idea. He will earn the money. He will take the case. His motivation is not greed. His business is thriving. He feels guilty about mislaying the letter and now he feels that the least he can do for Janet Crosby is to carry out her instructions.

Right from the start Vic senses that there’s something fishy going on. Janet’s death certificate was signed by a doddery old doctor who should have given up practising medicine twenty hears earlier and he wasn’t even her treating physician. Her treating physician was Dr Salzer and he isn’t a qualified medical practitioner. Janet died of a heart disease that would have produced debilitating symptoms long before her death, but two days before she died she was playing tennis.

Her sister Maureen is now ill and confined to bed, but the nurse caring for her tells Vic some very strange things that don’t add up at all. And then there’s the strange will left by the girls’ father, and the father’s death seems like it might be worth looking into as well. In fact there’s a whole bunch of stuff that Vic would like to look into. He has no idea what he is dealing with or looking for but he’s a sufficiently experienced investigator to know that there are almost certainly some serious cries involved. Possibly murder. Possibly more than one murder.

Vic gradually puts the pieces of the puzzle together and it makes a plausible picture but he is sure that there is something really big that he has overlooked. And he’s right about that.

It’s an outrageously complicated but entertaining plot with as many twists as any reader’s heart could desire. There’s murder, kidnapping, arson, gambling, medical malpractice, fraud - pretty much a full house of serious crimes.

And there’s a goodly amount of action, and some decent suspense. Our hero finds himself in plenty of danger, as do no less than three young women. Or maybe four.

Vic Malley is an honest private eye and in this instance he has that guilt about the forgotten letter to drive him on to uncover the truth. He’s a pretty tough guy and he’s pretty smart.

I have no doubt that an American reader at the time would have spotted plenty of minor local details that Chase got wrong but as a non-American reader seventy years later I wasn’t too bothered about stuff like that. It feels nicely hardboiled and that’s enough for me.

Lay Her Among the Lilies is a thoroughly enjoyable crime yarn and it’s highly recommended.

I also enjoyed, and reviewed, Chase’s 1941 novel The Doll’s Bad News.

Michael Crichton’s Binary

Binary, published in 1972, was Michael Crichton’s eleventh novel and the last that he wrote using the John Lange pseudonym. By this time Crichton was already a bestselling author following the huge success of The Andromeda Strain in 1969.

This is very much a techno-thriller. Technology plays a significant role but it’s all technology that actually existed in 1972. There’s a lot of fascinating stuff about the computer technology of that time. It deals with hacking. Hacking certainly went on at that time but it was a concept that had not yet entered public consciousness in a major way. Crichton always loved dealing with cutting-edge current technology rather than futuristic tech. He liked to be just a little ahead of the curve.

A State Department intelligence officer named John Graves has been in charge of a major surveillance operation. The target is John Wright. Wright is very wealthy and he’s a brilliant man but he does not appear to have broken any laws. This is something that makes Graves uncomfortable - he is not at ease with the idea of the American Government spying on its own citizens especially when they appear to be law-abiding citizens. Wright is under suspicion merely because he is the kind of man who might conceivably be a threat.

Wright is a political activist but like so many political activists his ideas are muddled and inconsistent. He seems to see himself as a political messiah. And while he has been careful to stay within the law there is now reason to suspect that he has now been involved at least indirectly in something illegal and genuinely worrying. Wright has a close associate, a man named Drew, who has been engaging in computer hacking. What’s worrying is that he has been hacking Defence Department computers. More worrying is that nobody can say for sure exactly what files he has been accessing, or why. When Graves figures that out it’s obvious that there is a very big problem indeed - Wright may be in possession of huge quantities of a terrifyingly potent nerve gas.

This is a political thriller but mostly it’s a psychological thriller. One of the files that has been hacked is Graves’ personal file. Graves realises that Wright’s primary motivation is game-playing. He is challenging Graves to a deadly game. Wright has been looking for a worthy opponent and Graves, a brilliant intelligence agent, qualifies on that count.

It’s possible that Wright doesn’t actually have any coherent political motive at all. He’s like a megalomaniac without a cause. What matters to Wright is winning the game and proving his towering genius to the world. He is probably quite insane. That could make Graves’ job extremely difficult except for the fortunate fact that Graves understands Wright’s madness. Graves is not insane, but in many ways his mind works the same way.

Wright has conceived a grandiose plan which consists of endless layers of complexity. Graves can never be sure how many further levels of fiendish complexity remain to be unraveled. And he can never be sure whether Wright is simply leading him on.

It’s a tense exciting story with plenty of fear but it’s Crichton’s handling of the psychological game-playing that makes it a great thriller. Graves and Wright are both great characters.

The nerve gas stuff is fascinating but it’s the 1972 computer tech that is most fun.

And there’s plenty of focus on bureaucratic madness, inter-agency rivalries and the catastrophic effects of the politicisation of every aspect of law enforcement and security.

Binary is superb entertainment. Very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of Crichton’s novels - The Andromeda Strain, Scratch One and The Terminal Man. I recommend these books very highly.