Mad Mesa

Doc Savage (Bantam) #66

by Kenneth Robeson (House Name), Lester Dent

In one of the most masterly of Doc Savage adventures, the Man of Bronze is jailed! But, all the prison bars in the world could not hold Doc when he was on his way to dispelling the madness in the desert that changes people into other identities.

Genres: Adventure, Fiction, Pulp, Science Fiction, Mystery

122 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 25, 2012

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

[Banner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since there are not a lot of reviews on this page I'm going to take this opportunity to chat a bit. 

Growing up I always liked comics books. From my earliest memories I read D.C. comics, then one day I picked up a Hulk comic written by Roy Thomas and edited by Stan Lee and my life was never the same. I was an serial adrenaline junkie!

I didn't get into reading regular books for awhile. My very first book I read was the Forgotten Door by Alexander Key (great book). But it was not enough to pull me away from the visually exciting Marvel universe. 

Then one day I saw the cover of The Bantam edition of Doc Savage Mad Mesa. Wow. I've always like desert scenes.  I still remember the absolute thrill I had after reading this book. Sure enough, according to my blooming addictive personality, I became a Doc Savage junkie.  I began a teenage long reading affair with Doc and his engaging five assistance. At some point I fell in love with his cousin Pat, a bronze goddess if there ever was one. 

This weekend after 40 years I re read Mad Mesa. Was I disappointed, disillusioned or otherwise dissuaded in anyway. No way! Doc Savage has still got it. 

Now I admit since I first read this the entertainment world has changed a bit. But the story was solid and entertaining. Monk & Ham still have a great love / hate relationship that makes me smile. Doc is still the ultimate good guy. Now there is probably no danger of these books winning some prize for great literature . But if your a superhero geek in any measure, give these books a try.

Amazon has most of the Bantam reprints in Kindle form for .99 cents. Now I guess I should say the format is messed up a bit in places, but I don't think it distracts too much.

Enjoy,

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mad Mesa is a "Doc Savage" novel by Kenneth Robeson. Kenneth Robeson was the house name used by Street and Smith Publications as the author of their popular Doc Savage novels. 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
I love reading these old pulp novels from time to time. I recently came across five of them in a used book store and snapped them up. I read about 80%+ of the Doc Savage novels when I was a teenager but that was a very long time ago.
In this one, Doc Savage and his men are in the thick of it again. I will have to say that the plot is very weak in this one but the action is classic Doc Savage. It does have a few twists such as apparent body-switching and Doc spends a few days in prison. All in all a good read in this classic series of books despite the weak plot.

[David Stephens · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve only read one Doc Savage novel before this, and it was fun enough, but I guess when you’re churning one of these out every month for several years, the fun eventually wears away. Mad Mesa is issue No. 71 of this series, and the magic, to the extent there really was any, is largely gone.

The story begins with a solid premise. Our everyman drifter takes a nap in the park only to wake up and find that everyone thinks he is a dastardly criminal. We are reintroduced to the Man of Bronze (who actually predates the Man of Steel by about five years but has definitely not acquired the cultural resonance) and his admirable good will and secret factory where he brainwashes criminals into upstanding citizens.

And there are some amazing character descriptions. One man is described this way: “he had a jaw built like the device they once put on the front of railway locomotives to knock cows off the tracks.” Another this way: “His body–like jointed sausages–was dressed in an expensive, neat suit, and dark glasses concealed the evil character of his eyes, which were like bird eggs that hadn’t hatched.” And almost every character is compared to some kind of animal, usually an owl. Each description reads like a Raymond Chandler reject.

But the best moments of this kind of pulp storytelling are the action, and there are large portions of this book where Doc Savage is absent or mildly thinking his way through something. So the book not only drags in the middle when Doc Savage is still alive and the villains don’t know that (who says dramatic irony always builds tension?), it drags for the better part of its duration. Without something more exciting going on, a plot that is both needlessly convoluted and nonsensical merely can’t sustain itself.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short little pulp novel, originally published in 1939 and then reprinted in the paperback series in 1972, is a fast moving and somewhat mysterious caper. A man wakes up on a park bench somehow transformed into another man, the notorious criminal Hondo Weatherbee (and kudos for that name, by the way). After some police chase him, he is knocked out, apparently by a bullet, and he wakes up again, this time in the penitentiary still mistaken for Hondo.

Eventually, word reaches Doc Savage and his five aides, and they head out to track down both the man in jail and his sister (who has been kidnapped - I forgot to mention that). This leads to further confusion - Doc disguises himself as Hondo's cellmate Big Eva while Monk, Ham, Renny, Johnny, and Long Tom follow some bad guys into a train which somehow disappears.

Eventually, it all comes to a sort of rational explanation, though it seems like a ridiculous amount of trouble and expense for the bad guys to go to for an admittedly large return. But worry not, for Doc Savage manages to save the day, as he did repeatedly in his adventures.

I enjoyed this one, though some stereotypical dialogue by the one Native American criminal in the novel rings pretty hollow nowadays.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a wonderful and fun read. For the be first time, both Hitler and Mussolini are mentioned. This occurs at the beginning of the story but have no bearing on the tale that will unfold. The writing is becoming more nuanced then blood n the earlier Doc Savage novels. It’s pulp fiction but Lester Dent is maturing in his authorship.

Most of the action takes place around the Salt Lake City. Doc and his men come in from New York City after receiving a letter from Tom Idle who is wrongfully in jail. Doc and crew fly to Ohio to investigate the disappearance of Tom’s sister. While Doc sends his men off to investigate im one direction, Doc ends up in the penitentiary in Utah.

Doc is involved in this caper along with all five of his men. Despite this, all of his crew are captured fairly early on and miss out on most of the adventure. Monk & Ham’s pets are mentioned as being brought along to Ohio but then are not mentioned again.

This was authored by Lester Dent and published January 1939.

[Ryan Harvey · Rating 2 out of 5]

By the end of the 1930s, Lester Dent's enthusiasm for the Doc Savage novels seems to have waned. Where the pulp magazines of 1933–35 were over-the-top thrills with globe-trotting action and supervillains with super-technology, in 1938–39 Doc and his team were mostly puttering around the United States following drab bad guys and slowly unfolding their dull schemes, all sprinkled with the same tired comedy bits like Monk and Ham bickering and Johnny using long words.

Mad Mesa is another of these routine adventures. It starts with a promising idea about a man who's had another identity forced onto him, but the wandering story isn't much about the mystery. The titular Mad Mesa is merely a backdrop for the finale and doesn't have much to do with the story, and the villains aren't remotely up to the level of dealing with Doc Savage, so Dent makes Doc remarkably easy to capture and imprison this time around. Not worth your time unless you're a die-hard Doc completist.

[Richard Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's alright.

Not a bad book. I feel like the writing is actually better here than in many other Doc Savage novels; smoother, with fewer awkward phrases. More modern, maybe? And the story is about okay, though it's nothing amazing.

So it's kinda fun, with a straightforward crime to solve. This is the second Doc Savage I've read recently that has no supernatural angle even in the beginning. Well, maybe; a character thinks his identity has been changed, so that probably counts.

I keep thinking there will be a little more wonder or magic or excitement in these books than there ends up being. I'm reading through them like somebody eating their way through a box of chocolates, finding nothing too good or too bad, hoping for an amazing surprise that never materializes. Meanwhile--

It's alright.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first Doc Savage story appeared in 1933 and the series ran in pulp and later digest format into 1949. Bantam reprinted the entire series in paperback with wonderful, iconic covers starting in the 1960's. Doc was arguably the first great modern superhero with a rich background, continuity, and mythos. The characterizations were far richer than was common for the pulps; his five associates and their sometimes-auxiliary, Doc's cousin Pat, and the pets Chemistry and Habeas Corpus, all had very distinctive characteristics and their byplay was frequently more entertaining that the current adventure-of-the-month. The settings were also fascinating: Doc's Fortress of Solitude, the Hidalgo Trading Company (which served as a front for his armada of vehicles), and especially the mysterious 86th floor headquarters all became familiar haunts to the reader, and the far-flung adventures took the intrepid band to exotic and richly-described locations all over the world. The adventures were always fast-paced and exciting, from the early apocalyptic world-saving extravaganzas of the early days to the latter scientific-detective style shorter works of the post-World War Two years. There were always a few points that it was difficult to believe along the way, but there were always more ups than downs, and there was never, ever a dull moment. The Doc Savage books have always been my favorite entertainments... I was always, as Johnny would say, superamalgamated!

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doc Savage in prison, and Long Tom in drag!

The year 1939 opened with a few interesting wrinkles in Doc Savage land, with the very solid "Mad Mesa" satisfying nicely.

This one has an unlikely plot point or two but brings home the goods. "Mad Mesa" opens with a man who apparently has had his body switched with another and wound up serving another man's life sentence in prison.

This adventure takes us from New York to Ohio to Utah and points west as Doc and his aides (all five this time; this was becoming rare) poke into a mystery that eventually has Doc taking the highly risky gambit of letting himself be jailed. Eventually, Doc, well known as a crime fighter, has to break out in a very interesting twist. Along the way, all five aides disguise themselves while investigating: Monk, Ham and Renny as black men (the less said about that the better), Johnny as a bearded man and misogynist Long Tom as ... an old woman! I wonder about you sometimes, Long Tom.

We're taken to a huge western dam and a Devil's Tower-like formation, and a decent wind-up to the action. The body-switching idea doesn't really go anyplace, unfortunately. Writer Lester Dent could have developed this better. On the whole "Mad Mesa" is pretty unspectacular but also interesting for a number of reasons, and just solidly good.

[Keith B · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 for nostalgia... but only for nostalgia! Usually, I can confidently say I've read the DS novels more than once but, I can't imagine that even my 12 yr old self would have wanted to re-read this one.

I had to check to be sure this was a Lester Dent novel and not one of the other authors. Doc isn't characterized at all like he usually is. Perhaps it is the "cold" he has at the beginning of the novel that threw him off. All of the gang really don't have much of a roll in the story... including Doc. Definitely seems to be thrown together or salvaged from another novel and Doc and the gang inserted as an afterthought.

[Little Timmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of all the pulp era heroes few stand out above the crowd, Doc Savage is one of these. With his 5 aides and cousin he adventures across the world. Fighting weird menaces, master criminals and evil scientists Doc and the Fab 5 never let you down for a great read. These stories have all you need; fast paced action, weird mystery, and some humor as the aides spat with each other. My highest recommendation.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of Doc's more conventional pulp adventures, though with a heck of a kickoff (guy wakes up to find he's in someone else's body, or so it seems) and a great midpoint sequence where Doc's in prison and has to bust out. It moves fast, but felt a little unsatisfying by the end. Still, probably 3.5 stars.

[David Ivester · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best written of these that I have read.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cool and twisted tale packed into a bit of pulp - excellent Doc Savage ride.

[Ronald · Rating 4 out of 5]

read some time in 1988