SHOULD THIS BOOK BE FORGOTTEN? -- MURDER ISLAND

Murder Island by James Petterson and Brian Sitts  (2024)

Certainly not a forgotten book.  Definitely not an old book; it was published last month.  But part of me is thinking it really should be forgotten.  Not that it's a bad book, per se.  It's just that it feels like a fraudulent book to me.  It's a Doc Savage novel.  Except, of course, it isn't.

M ore years ago than I care to remember, I worked in a department store, and one day we had a new general manager.  He wanted the whole world to known that there was a new boss in town, that things were going to be different.  So the first day he was on the job, he reversed the escalators -- the UP escalators became the DOWN and the DOWN escalators became the UP.  That way, both staff and customers knew at once that things were different.  I cant say that during his tenure things improved at the store, but he felt he had made a point.  And, I suppose, he felt good about that. 

Have you ever watched a television show and liked it, and then someone new was put in charge and they changed the whole nature of the show?  Changed the concept, changed the location, shifted or eliminated some well-loved characters, altered the motivation of the main characters, or in some way altered the show just to show they are now in charge, and its their  vision you are now watching and not the previous guys.  I'm sure you have, and I'm pretty sure you weren't impressed.  But, no matter.  the new guy has marked his territory and that's what counts.

Doc Savage has been a staple of popular culture for over ninety years.  As one of the most famous pulp magazine characters, he has gone through 181 adventures.  He has been immortalized though comics, a radio program, a feature movie, and a "biography."  An additional 23 new Doc Savage novels have been published in recent years, most written by pulp historian Will Murray.  Doc Savage has a strong and recognizable legacy.

Doc is Clark Savage, Jr., a man who has been raised by his father to be the ultimate human being -- strong, athletic, and brave, with an intellect that outshines others in many various fields.  Doc Savage is dedicated to righting wrongs, to helping the helpless, to be a positive light in the world.  His vast wealth comes from a hidden South American mine (gold, maybe, perhaps diamonds -- I can't remember).  He has five loyal assistant, each tops in their respective fields.  His beautiful cousin Pat sometimes joins him on his adventures.  And what adventures!  He fights supervillains, wannabe dictators, vicious gangs, mad scientists, and presumed supernatural foes -- it's all in a day's work for Doc and his gang.

And then there's James Patterson and Brian Sitts's Doc Savage.  This one id Brandt Savage, the grandson of the original Doc.  He's a mild-mannered professor of archaeology (shades of Indiana Jones!) who has been coopted and trained by the beautiful Kiri Sunlight.  Kiri's training over a six-month period has made him almost as superhuman as his ancestor.  They fought some deadly fores, then Doc opted out and went back to teaching and did not see Kiri for a year.

No Kiri is back and Doc realizes that he has loved her all this time.  But there are some highly trained Russian assassins after her (and, it turns out, after Doc as well).  And things go from bad to worse.  and now it's time for a bit of backstory.

It seems that Doc Savage had a twin brother, Cal, who got the short end of the stick from their father.  Doc got the training and the glory and Cal got bupkis.  So Cal turns evil.  He teams up with Doc's most dangerous foe, John Sunlight, to form a secret Russian assassin training camp.  (Not that the Russians necessarily knew about this.)  The training camp gets more secret and more deadly as the years pass.  Kiri -- the great granddaughter of John Sunlight -- was born into this camp and had been trained as one of their most effective agents, but she soon had enough and broke out of the camp and disavowed its ways.  Now she loves Doc, but doesn't really talk about her past.  Doc does not know he has a third cousin, Cal Savage IV, who now runs the assassin facility and is planning to take over the world through fomenting wars all over the globe.  Cal realizes that if anyone is capable of putting paid to his plans, it's Doc and Kiri. so he keeps trying to kill them.

In Petterson and Sitts's Doc Savage universe, the original Doc was  sort of a dick, just as likely to murder his foes than not.  He also does not have his gang to back him up.  what he does have are all sorts of plans for secret weapons he has invented, many of which will not be even thought of for decades.  Their original Doc still  fights for what is right, but much of his reputation is hearsay or overstated. 

There's also a psychotic descendant of king Leopold of Belgium, who is planning to regain his ancestor's hold on the Congo.  A few pirates here and there.  A copper mine in Tanzania being worked on by slave labor.  A Somali militia.  A secret yacht that has not docked in over ten years and which avoids normal seaways.  An assassin almost as sexy as Kiri.  And a jewel-encrusted scimitar that Doc keeps with him that really serves no purpose in the plot except to slaughter a group of children so doc can be blamed for their murders.

This is a real hodgepodge of a plot that does not stand close examination.

My main point is that, if this is a Doc Savage novel, it's a mess.  If it did not pretend to be a Doc Savage novel and was presented as a somewhat wild, fanciful, coincidence-laden thriller, it could be ranked somewhere above being merely passable.

But for some reason Patterson and Sitts decided to put their own stamp on the Doc Savage mythology, marking their territory, if you will.  And that, in my humble opinion was a big mistake.

Oh.  And about that title.  I think it refers to an atoll that takes up a minor part of the book -- about forty pages, less than a quarter of the way in.