The Blood Ogre: The Hellish Menace Beneath the House Doc Savage Built

Adventures of Zana O'Savin #1

by Craig McDonald, Douglas Klauba (Illustrator)

USA, the Great Depression. Lester Dent and Walter Gibson are the most-prolific, widely published storytellers on earth, authors of Doc Savage and The Shadow magazines—ground-breaking pulp heroes inspiring Superman and Batman, and launching the comic book age.

Tasked with writing two Shadow novels each month, Gibson uses a battery of typewriters, resting bloodied fingertips between books as he pounds out 1,680,000 words a year. Attempting a similar impossible schedule, Dent suffers an apparent nervous breakdown—beginning to see and actually interact with his Doc Savage characters, come-to-life.

In 1949, Dent pens his oddest and last-published Doc Savage novel, one in which he sends his strapping bronze adventurer into the very heart of Hell. Ten years later, Dent is dead.

Jump The nearly forgotten Doc Savage and Shadow pulp novels are enjoying new life in paperback, selling millions of copies. Yet, simultaneously, people report seeing a strange, black-clad figure with coal-fire eyes around an old brownstone on Gay Street in Greenwich Village. The building in question? The very one in which Gibson penned the last of his Shadow novels in 1949. A dabbler in the occult, Gibson insists to interviewers the specter is that of The Shadow, and is a tulpa , or “living mind-projection,” spawned by his unrivaled literary output. But another, far more sinister “mind creature” is actively threatening the world, a tulpa hatched by an adolescent Lester Dent and left to lash out from earth’s fiery center.

In the tradition of Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay , and Paul Malmont’s The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril , Edgar Award©-finalist Craig McDonald offers a haunting mix of history and meta-fiction centered on the very act of literary creation, but served up as 21st Century, pulp-lit adventure in which pulp fiction characters literally come to life.

303 pages, Paperback

First published July 12, 2022

About the author

Edgar/Anthony-nominee Craig McDonald is an award-winning novelist, editor and journalist. His internationally acclaimed Hector Lassiter series includes "One True Sentence," "Forever's Just Pretend," "Toros & Torsos," "The Great Pretender," "Roll the Credits," "The Running Kind," "Print the Legend," "Three Chords & the Truth," "Write From Wrong," and "Head Games," which was a finalist for the Edgar, Anthony, Gumshoe and Crimespree Magazine awards for best first novel. It is being adapted as a graphic novel by First Second for release in 2015.

A standalone thriller about illegal immigration, "El Gavilan," was published in autumn 2011 to starred reviews and was also selected for several year's best lists.

A new series of direct-to-eBook thrillers featuring crime novelist Chris Lyon was launched in 2012; the series features crossovers by characters from the Hector Lassiter series; Hector himself appears in "Angels of Darkness."

Reviews

[Steve Goble · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just plain pulpy fun, and very well written!

[John Duckett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Craig McDonald has created a marvelous work with this first-in-a-series story. He not only brought into our timeline our beloved Pat Savage (known now as Zana O’Savin), but also her famed bronze cousin and his five associates. Furthermore, he linked it all together with the author and historical facts about the creation of the pulp adventures that we Doc Savage fans so love to share.

I highly recommend this book to any and all lovers of high adventure. I’m sure you don’t have to be a die hard fan of pulps and pulp heroes, but it doesn’t hurt!

[Steve Virgin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Obviously written with love for, and tremendous knowledge of, the hero pulps. An inspired plot and an imaginative way of bringing our favourite characters into the 21st century. I would have given it a 4* review but it does need a good edit. Apart from missing definitive articles there are basic errors in names (Dominique, Dominque, Domonique) that kept distracting me into looking for a reason for these alternatives. Recommended, but I hope future editions are edited more carefully.

[Ralph Carlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very fun read. Especially for those of us who love Doc Savage.