Doc Savage: The Secret of the Su and the Spook of Grandpa Eben

As a comics fan, pitting Doc Savage against Dr. Light in THE SECRET OF THE SU makes me laugh in a way the original readers wouldn’t have. It’s a good adventure marred by an anticlimactic McGuffin.

The story opens with a Florida doctor, Wilson, attempting to reach Doc Savage. Years ago, Wilson saved the lives of some Native Americans in the Everglades. In gratitude one of them, nicknamed Slow John, has been the doctor’s faithful sidekick ever since (this ages just as poorly as one would expect). Now Slow John (who isn’t slow; like the Native American in The Goblins he’s extremely smart) has revealed an incredible secret. Well, two secrets. One is that Slow John’s tribe are not Seminole but Su, a lost race dating back to ancient Atlantis. The other is that they have a McGuffin, something so amazing only Doc Savage can handle it.

Enter Dr. Light, AKA Dr. Licht. A German immigrant, Light was approached by Axis agents a couple of years before the story started. He still had relatives in Germany; if he wasn’t willing to work as a spy, bad things would happen to them. Light’s response was to laugh — kill them all, it’s not like he’ll care! However, if he discovers something of interest to the Reich and they can meet his price, he’ll be in touch. He’s a complete bastard, and that’s appealing in a villain. And the secret of the Su generates a lot interest; Light’s price for giving it to them is a cool $3 mill.

What follows is a lot of doublecrossing as Light’s team and some more dedicated Nazis race Doc’s crew to the lost land of the Su, somewhere deep in the Everglades. Dent makes good use of the Everglades, a vast junglelike world nowhere near as drained and tamed as it is now. The Su, of course, are not happy with visitors, and willing to set trained hawks on them (hence the cover).

Unfortunately the secret is a letdown. The Su have a wonder drug for treating infection, better than sulfa antibiotics. It could save thousands of soldiers on whichever side controls it. Which is perfectly true, but it’s not very dramatic. Even at the time, I wonder if fans felt that was satisfactory.

THE SPOOK OF GRANDPA EBEN opens in a small Western town where Billy Riggs, a likeable ex-con, is humiliated by Copeland, a local big shot businessman. Copeland is a grasping miser who sent Billy to jail for a theft he didn’t commit, and has hounded him ever since, demanding employers fire him, that sort of thing. Ezra Strong, another young man (usually I think of anyone named Ezra as a grizzled oldster) suggests Billy use his grandfather’s supposedly magical charm to wish a curse on Copeland.  To Billy’s surprise, Ezra’s amusement and Copeland’s horror, an invisible Something blocks Copeland’s path.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Copeland’s also got Doc Savage on his back. Copeland’s a crooked military contractor so Monk and Ham are investigating him; Monk’s checking the quality of Copeland’s chemicals, Ham’s going over his records for legal issues (one of the few times Ham got to do any actual law work in the series). The spook keeps returning, something or someone kills Copeland and before dying, he puts the blame on Doc. Once again, Doc has to go on the run from the cops while investigating the spook. And the bad guys who really killed Copeland are trying to take out Doc and

It turns out that Ezra has invented a force-field device, although they don’t call it that. It’s not effective enough to be of use in the war, but it might be effective in crime. When a local bad guy learned about it from Ezra’s dimwit girlfriend, he set all the events in motion. Doc, of course, clears everything up and takes the crooks down

Overall, this was a minor one.

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