Mad Mesa by "Kenneth Robeson" (Lester Dent) (first published in Doc Savage Magazine, January 1939 [Doc Savage #71]; reprinted by Bantam Books as Doc Savage #66, 1972; reprinted with Land of Always Night in Doc Savage Sanctum Editions [#4], 2007 later included in Sanctum's Doc Savage Classic Superpack #1, 2015; evidently reprinted with The Yellow Crowd, possibly by Bantam, no date given; available online at fadedpage.com, and possibly elsewhere)
This is a Doc Savage novel that you either love or hate; there appears to be little middle ground.
Thomas Idle has been hanging around Salt Lake City, looking for work with no success. As long as he picks up after himself the cops will not roust him for sleeping on a park bench. Then one morning he wakes up and he has different clothes on. Worse, he is in a different body, that of notorious gangster Hondo Weatherbee. Both citizens and the police appear to be gunning for him, thinking he the desperate outlaw. A mysterious man in black gloves knocks Joe out and he wakes up in Utah State Prison, still in Hondo's body. But wait. Hondo has been in the prison for more than eleven years; back then he was captured in the exact same circumstances that Thomas Idle was captured only five days before. Naturally, no one believes Idle's story and he is looking toward a sentence of life imprisonment.
Idle has just one hope. He has read of a man called Doc Savage, who is a champion of the oppressed and innocent. He smuggles a letter to his sister, asking her to ask Doc Savage for help. Nona Idle writes to Doc and says she would like to meet with him to discuss her brother's plight. On her way there, she is doped and supposedly taken to a hospital by a man calling himself Dr. Joiner -- who actually the man in the black gloves.
Nona had included her brother's letter with the one she sent Doc. When Nona did not appear, Doc knew something was wrong. With his five noted assistants -- Monk Ham, Johnny, Long Tom, and Renny -- Doc goes to Ohio to investigate. All six are immediately kidnapped and are to be sent to their respective dooms in a lava pit., but we know there ain't no stinking lava pit that can hold Doc Savage.
Not a lava pit. no.no.no. But what about a jail? Not long afterwards, Doc finds himself jailed at the penitentiary in the guise of Big Eva, another dangerous thug. Doc Savage must face off against an evil genius who can place a man's mind in another's body...
The plot is a bit more phantasmagorical that many of Doc's adventures, but the pacing is fast, and, once the reader gets over the original shock, the plot seems pretty tight. Many count this among Doc's greatest adventures, while some pan it utterly. Your mileage may vary.
There were only a couple of off-putting things that bothered me.
First, the use of the word "aid" for "aide." Doc Savage has five aides, not five aids. Eww, this grates on me, much as the use of the word "clew" for "clue" in the early Erle Stanly Gardner stories, but at least that was acceptable for the time; i may be wrong, but I don't think transposes "aid" for "aide" was ever acceptable.
Second, one character affects a pidgin English dialect, one of a stereotypical native American. the character has absolutely no american Indian blood in him, but him likum talk likum Injun bigtime. No reason for this. It's simply off-putting.
Thirdly, also off-putting is the standard dialog of Johnny -- William Harper Littlejohn -- a man addicted to using big words" "I'll be superamalgamated." "An enigmatical verbal summation precipitated our eventuation." Baa! Off-putting to the extreme, but this trait follows him throughout the Doc Savage saga.
Fourthly (and finally), Doc Savage's "college," a super-secret hospital where the crooks Doc captures are given lobotomies to erase all memories of the past. These patients (?)/students(?)/victims (?) are then trained to hate crime, are taught trades at which they could make a living, and then discharged back into the world. This truly horrific concept was first introduced in the first Doc Savage adventure, but most of the later adventures do not mention it and I had hoped it would have been gone for good. No such luck. Lord save us from well-intentioned do-gooders.
With those quibbles aside, I thought this was a pretty good Doc Savage novel.
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