Sunday, August 21, 2016

DOC SAVAGE #82: THE BOSS OF TERROR

Here’s the word on another Sanctum Books classic...

Doc Savage #82: The Boss of Terror and The Magic Forest [June 2015; $14.95] reprints two novels by Lester Dent and William G. Bogart (writing as Kenneth Robeson) that literally take Doc from one end of the country to the other.

Dent’s The Boss of Terror first appeared in the May 1940 issue of Doc Savage Magazine. The adventure is set in the Main wilderness. Here’s the back cover blurb:

Eerie bolts of blue lightning electrocute wealthy men whose only connection is their last name, in an expanded novel featuring restored text from Lester Dent’s original manuscript.

Bogart’s The Magic Forest is set in Alaska, well before it became a state. It’s from the April 1942 issue of Doc Savage Magazine. The back cover blurb:

Doc Savage searches for The Magic Forest after Renny’s plane vanishes.

Renny is, of course, one of Doc Savage’s five friends who share his love of adventure and his commitment to fight evil and help people.

Noted historian Will Murray’s “Intermission” gives the background on these Doc Savage stories. Publisher Anthony Tollin contributes essays on America’s Air Ace “Bill Barnes” and “The Men Behind Doc Savage.”

This book also reprints the five-page Bill Barnes comic-book story from the second issue of Shadow Comics.     
As with other Sanctum Books editions - The Black Bat, The Shadow and others - these Doc Savage novels are entertaining journeys into the heroic fiction of the pulp era.  They’re wonderfully made books and I regularly despair I might never get around to reading all of them. More to come.

© 2016 Tony Isabella

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