• Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine, December 1935
• Reprinted by Bantam as DS # 14
• Ryerson Johnson writing as Kenneth Robeson
A remote island in the Galápagos archipelago holds an evil secret — a slave labor camp run by the pitiless and cruel Count Ramadanoff, an exiled Russian nobleman who lives in a castle carved from the black volcanic rock. Passing ships are decoyed onto treacherous reefs, their captured crews chained in pits to dig until they die. These unfortunates are never told what they’re digging for on the island plain known as “The Devil’s Honeycomb”... None of them lives long enough to ever find out. Here the Count rules over all, absolute master of life and death.
When Doc Savage associate Johnny Littlejohn, the renowned geologist, disappears in the Galápagos while on a scientific expedition, Doc’s cousin Patricia, accompanied by Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks, sets sail to search for him. Their yacht is wrecked and they are soon “guests” of Count Ramadanoff at his sinister abode. Monk and Ham manage to send out a distress signal from the castle’s radio room, for which they are condemned to hard labor in the pits. The Count has something else in mind for the beautiful Pat, which could well include being fed to the madman’s giant, flesh-eating iguanas. Meanwhile, in New York City, Doc and aides Renny Renwick and Long Tom Roberts are attacked by the Count’s henchmen before they can mount a rescue operation. Poisonous centipedes are loosed in Doc’s Manhattan HQ...
Ryerson Johnson only wrote three Doc Savage novels, which is a shame — he was easily the best of the “Kenneth Robesons” not named Lester Dent. (Johnson’s Land of Always-Night, also from 1935, is one of the all-time greatest Doc books, period.) Pacing is relentless, action plentiful and exciting; the standard pulp hero clichés are given an imaginative gloss. His Count Ramadanoff is something of a stock, cardboard villain for the series — complete with ominous laugh, death trap-laden castle, vicious henchmen and island of pet “monsters” — but for a singular exception: He’s almost as physically imposing as Doc Savage, and isn’t the least bit afraid to fight him or his aides hand-to-hand. (Albeit wearing wire-mesh gloves with sewn-in brass knuckles when squaring off against Doc, it should be noted.) Doc fans will doubtless get a shock when Ramadanoff takes a punch to the head from Renny — he of the oversized, granite-hard fists that can smash through door panels — and then proceeds to knock him out cold with one blow. (This is absolutely unprecedented. It always takes a whole gaggle of henchmen to bring Renny down if he isn’t surprised with a blackjack or lead pipe from behind.)
Johnson bungles in only one notable instance. Fortunately it’s not a serious enough gaffe to totally sink the book. On occasion Ramadanoff employs a bizarre method of assassination known as the “Thumb-hole Death”, in which victims inexplicably keel over dead with a blunt-trauma wound — a depression approximately the size of the tip of a man’s thumb — to their skulls. They aren’t seen to be hit or shot with anything; the wound just suddenly appears and the target instantly dies. The explanation Johnson ultimately supplies for how this is done (on the very last page) is utter bullshit... It’s as if he’d never quite figured out how he was going to explain it until the last moment, and then just grasped the first straw that wafted by in order to get ‘er done. It’s funny, I suppose, that I could easily accept a castle courtyard swarming with alligator-sized, man-eating iguanas but simply couldn’t buy the rationale behind the Thumb-hole Death. Happily, it’s not a particularly important element of the story (and could’ve easily been ditched altogether with minimal editing).
As for the Man of Bronze himself, Doc really kicks some serious ass in this tale — whipping ten thugs singlehandedly in a brawl; climbing up the dumbwaiter shaft of a 9-story building engulfed in fire (while busting holes in the wall to rescue his trapped assistants); leaping onto the landing gear of an autogyro as it takes off, forcing the pilot to bail out before taking the controls himself; fighting and killing a shark armed only with a knife; battling another dozen bad guys using just a bullwhip and his fists; jumping into the midst of the killer iguanas, using their backs as stepping-stones; scaling the jagged cone of an erupting volcano... and all while maintaining his calm and composed Mr. Spock demeanor. This is the stuff that, when thrillingly written as it is here, makes Doc Savage such a cool proto-superhero.
Grade: B
• Reprinted by Bantam as DS # 14
• Ryerson Johnson writing as Kenneth Robeson
A remote island in the Galápagos archipelago holds an evil secret — a slave labor camp run by the pitiless and cruel Count Ramadanoff, an exiled Russian nobleman who lives in a castle carved from the black volcanic rock. Passing ships are decoyed onto treacherous reefs, their captured crews chained in pits to dig until they die. These unfortunates are never told what they’re digging for on the island plain known as “The Devil’s Honeycomb”... None of them lives long enough to ever find out. Here the Count rules over all, absolute master of life and death.
When Doc Savage associate Johnny Littlejohn, the renowned geologist, disappears in the Galápagos while on a scientific expedition, Doc’s cousin Patricia, accompanied by Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks, sets sail to search for him. Their yacht is wrecked and they are soon “guests” of Count Ramadanoff at his sinister abode. Monk and Ham manage to send out a distress signal from the castle’s radio room, for which they are condemned to hard labor in the pits. The Count has something else in mind for the beautiful Pat, which could well include being fed to the madman’s giant, flesh-eating iguanas. Meanwhile, in New York City, Doc and aides Renny Renwick and Long Tom Roberts are attacked by the Count’s henchmen before they can mount a rescue operation. Poisonous centipedes are loosed in Doc’s Manhattan HQ...
Ryerson Johnson only wrote three Doc Savage novels, which is a shame — he was easily the best of the “Kenneth Robesons” not named Lester Dent. (Johnson’s Land of Always-Night, also from 1935, is one of the all-time greatest Doc books, period.) Pacing is relentless, action plentiful and exciting; the standard pulp hero clichés are given an imaginative gloss. His Count Ramadanoff is something of a stock, cardboard villain for the series — complete with ominous laugh, death trap-laden castle, vicious henchmen and island of pet “monsters” — but for a singular exception: He’s almost as physically imposing as Doc Savage, and isn’t the least bit afraid to fight him or his aides hand-to-hand. (Albeit wearing wire-mesh gloves with sewn-in brass knuckles when squaring off against Doc, it should be noted.) Doc fans will doubtless get a shock when Ramadanoff takes a punch to the head from Renny — he of the oversized, granite-hard fists that can smash through door panels — and then proceeds to knock him out cold with one blow. (This is absolutely unprecedented. It always takes a whole gaggle of henchmen to bring Renny down if he isn’t surprised with a blackjack or lead pipe from behind.)
Johnson bungles in only one notable instance. Fortunately it’s not a serious enough gaffe to totally sink the book. On occasion Ramadanoff employs a bizarre method of assassination known as the “Thumb-hole Death”, in which victims inexplicably keel over dead with a blunt-trauma wound — a depression approximately the size of the tip of a man’s thumb — to their skulls. They aren’t seen to be hit or shot with anything; the wound just suddenly appears and the target instantly dies. The explanation Johnson ultimately supplies for how this is done (on the very last page) is utter bullshit... It’s as if he’d never quite figured out how he was going to explain it until the last moment, and then just grasped the first straw that wafted by in order to get ‘er done. It’s funny, I suppose, that I could easily accept a castle courtyard swarming with alligator-sized, man-eating iguanas but simply couldn’t buy the rationale behind the Thumb-hole Death. Happily, it’s not a particularly important element of the story (and could’ve easily been ditched altogether with minimal editing).
As for the Man of Bronze himself, Doc really kicks some serious ass in this tale — whipping ten thugs singlehandedly in a brawl; climbing up the dumbwaiter shaft of a 9-story building engulfed in fire (while busting holes in the wall to rescue his trapped assistants); leaping onto the landing gear of an autogyro as it takes off, forcing the pilot to bail out before taking the controls himself; fighting and killing a shark armed only with a knife; battling another dozen bad guys using just a bullwhip and his fists; jumping into the midst of the killer iguanas, using their backs as stepping-stones; scaling the jagged cone of an erupting volcano... and all while maintaining his calm and composed Mr. Spock demeanor. This is the stuff that, when thrillingly written as it is here, makes Doc Savage such a cool proto-superhero.
Grade: B
3 comments:
I read this when I was 13, my first Doc Savage novel. I was grateful then to have these books in my life, and I'm still grateful now.
Another fine review. Please keep them coming.
I've always thought this one was also a bit of a nod to The Most Dangerous game, the film adaptation of which came out in 1932...
The film was shot beautifully-all that black & white fog in the jungle.
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