Quest of the Spider / The Mountain Monster

Doc Savage Sanctum Editions #30

by Kenneth Robeson, Lester Dent, Will Murray (Contributor)

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2009

About the author

Kenneth Robeson was the house name used by Street and Smith Publications as the author of their popular character Doc Savage and later The Avenger. Though most Doc Savage stories were written by the author Lester Dent, there were many others who contributed to the series, including:

William G. Bogart
Evelyn Coulson
Harold A. Davis
Lawrence Donovan
Alan Hathway
W. Ryerson Johnson

Lester Dent is usually considered to be the creator of Doc Savage. In the 1990s Philip José Farmer wrote a new Doc Savage adventure, but it was published under his own name and not by Robeson. Will Murray has since taken up the pseudonym and continued writing Doc Savage books as Robeson.

All 24 of the original stories featuring The Avenger were written by Paul Ernst, using the Robeson house name. In order to encourage sales Kenneth Robeson was credited on the cover of The Avenger magazine as "the creator of Doc Savage" even though Lester Dent had nothing to do with The Avenger series. In the 1970s, when the series was extended with 12 additional novels, Ron Goulart was hired to become Robeson.

Reviews

[Tim Deforest · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quest of the Spider, from 1933, is an early Doc Savage novel, written when the exact nature of the bronze-skinned hero was being worked out. He's a bit more ruthless and willing to kill the bad guys in this one than he would be in later novels.

But the story is still a good one. It's set in New Orleans and the surrounding swamps, with Doc going up against a villain who is trying to take over the local lumber industry. That villain has recruited a tribe of vood00-worshiping men who are descended from criminals who escaped into the swamps.

With the story alternating between the city and the swamps, there is room for a nice variety of action scenes--everything from gun battles in the streets to dodging alligators in the swamps. It's not the best Doc Savage story, but it's still a lot of fun.

The Mountain Monster, from 1938, is the better of the two novels. Apparently, a giant spider is raising havoc and killing people in a remote Alaskan location. Someone tries to contact Doc Savage, who is giving a lecture in Chicago, but is murdered. Doc, though, still ends up on the case. Battling gangsters and avoiding death traps, he eventually travels to Alaska to confront the monster and find out what the heck is going on.

Aside from the great action scenes, the nature of the monster adds to the mystery. Doc Savage lives in a world full of super-science and islands populated by dinosaurs, so the possibility that the monster is real exists. But real or fake, the bad guys are using it for some mysterious purpose. The eventual solution is satisfying and leads to a conclusion that is actually pretty brutal in regards to how the primary villains meet their ends.

[Ronald · Rating 4 out of 5]

reread Quest of the Spider in 2004