Doc Savage: Czar of Fear by Lester Dent

Doc Savage
Czar of Fear
by Lester Dent
November 1933

Doc is accused of murder while facing the hooded Green Bell, who is destroying the industry of a small town. The kind of case Doc can face in his sleep, and the added element of him being a fugitive just meant he had to duck down in his car a couple times.

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Doc Savage 006 - The Red Skull - by Lester Dent

The Red Skull
Doc Savage 006
August 1933
By Lester Dent

Doc flies out to Arizona to help build a dam that's being sabotaged.  That's about it.  There's an attack dog with teeth of hypodermic needles filled with poison but it doesn't really do anything.  A couple twists that make no damn sense.  There's prominent use of an autogyro, which I guess was exotic at the time.

Doc Savage 008 - The Sargasso Ogre

Doc Savage 008
The Sargasso Ogre
by Kenneth Robeson (Lester Dent)
October 1933

And you thought his ripped shirts were provocative

Doc and the gang are aboard a boat that gets hijacked by a gang of thugs, included the titular Ogre, whose strength matches that of Savage.  The liner gets set adrift in the Sargasso Sea, a fictional dead zone in the Atlantic where multiple currents meet and deposit derelict vessels.

Here, amongst the seaweed, are scores of ghost ships and a boat full of Amazon-esque survivors guarding a treasure.  Shades of Waterworld.  Great sense of setting, and great action as Doc navigates the maze of ships to take on an army of pirates.

Also fun for having Doc interact with a large group of women.  Of course, they constantly swoon at his bronze magnificence, but their flirting is futile as Doc is famously "woman-proof".  On the flip side, this is one of the few things that Doc is not the world's best at.  Although familiar with feminine psychology, "the intricacies of the feminine mind were beyond any psychologist".  Dames.

Doc Savage 005 - Pirate of the Pacific

Pirate of the Pacific
Doc Savage 005
by Kenneth Robeson (Lester Dent)
Doc Savage Magazine July 1933

From pulpcovers.com

Coming directly off the heels of The Polar Treasure, the gang returns by submarine to New York only to be attacked by Asian pirates.  The chase/capture/escape cycles go from the skyscrapers of New York to a cruise ship from San Francisco to a stand in for the Philippines.  Big action in this one, as Savage gets in more fisticuffs than I've seen in the previous books combined and his five compatriots tear through crates of ammo for their machine pistols.  Remmy gets the spotlight this time, and Monk and Ham get separated early on so there's less of their squabbling.

Not much in the way of plot.  After the failed assassination attempt, Savage tracks down and chases the culprits, led by the elusive pirate Tom-Too, who seems more like a pan-Asian revolutionary than a bandit.

I was worried about this one because it opened with an almost surreal barrage of racial invective.  Most of the time this stuff is just either outdated terms or casual bigotry, but Dent really unloads.  This makes for uncomfortable reading for the modern reader, but it was also just bad writing.  You really can't use "inscrutable" more than once in a paragraph.  Luckily it seems that he was just getting it out of his system and he lets off a bit later in the book, though he stirr lesolts to that annoying R and L swap in the diarect.  Also, Remmy is in black-face.

Doc Savage 004 - The Polar Treasure

Doc Savage 004
June 1933
The Polar Treasure
by Lester Dent as Kenneth Robeson

Doc and the gang save the life of a blind musician who's the key to finding a treasure sunken in the polar icecap.  I managed to get this far in the Doc Savage series before running into any particularly nasty racism.  Dent must have been saving it up, because he does not like him some Eskimos.  In addition to being savage and ignorant, a sentence doesn't go by without calling them greasy or smelly.

Things that Doc Savage is the best in the world of in this episode include world's best composer and world's best singing voice.  Also, he can cure blindness and his skin repels water like a duck.

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