Scan barcode
hpuphd's review
2.0
Writer Lester Dent was a hack (though at the pace of a novel a month, a really overworked one; his working life was one NaNoWriMo after another), and his Doc Savage novels are at times laughable (even to an 8th-grade reader, as I was long ago). Rereading this one originally published in pulp in 1933 for nostalgia, I was surprised at how fully the Depression gets into the story, how the character of Ole Slater seems like a young Clifford Odets gathering copy for an agitprop play, and how sweet and seditious Aunt Nora, as Will Murray has pointed out, seems based on Mother Jones. There is the usual silliness (Doc goes from beating up villains one second to acting bashful around girls the next), but the slice of life element provides the greatest interest. (My friend Larry Davis and I thought Doc’s unconscious trilling sound was stupid even in junior high.)
More...