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SAVAGE_HONEYCOMB

                                                mid-2007

                                                          Originally in:
   Kenneth Robeson,                                       NAUGHT_SEVEN
   "The Fantastic Island" (1933)

    Unusually readable for a "Doc Savage"
    novel, probably because very little of         A few points of data
    it deals with Savage's useless henchmen        for future researches,
    blundering around on their own.  Savage        if any:
    is on stage from fairly early in the story,
    and stays there almost continuously.              There's a mention
                                                      of shipping someone
    This really is the thinnest possible              upstate to Doc's
    adventure story schtick, though --                secret hospital
    Doc repeatedly gets himself out of                where an operation
    "scrapes" using concealed tricks we               will cure someone's
    haven't been told about before.                   criminal tendencies
                                                      (we call these
       Oh, and Doc's odd                              "lobotomies" these
       little tick --                                 days).
       many pulpy heroes    (E.g. Nero
       have such ticks,      Wolfe's                  Pat Savage appears,
       in fact many are      lip action.)             and has a few lines
       nothing but --                                 of godawful "plucky
                                                      heroine" dialog
       "Suddenly, the many-mouthed murmur             at the outset, before
       in the lobby, came a weird sound,              she becomes another
       a kind of musical trilling which               search object --
       ran up and down the scale, softly              almost as bad as
       fantastically, as though the sound             Doc's "aides".
       emanated from the air itself.  It
       was suggestive of the sibilant                 A mysterious cause
       slipping of an evening wind                    of death turns out
       through palm fronds, or of the                 to be another childish
       call of some golden-winged bird                piece of stage trickery
       out of an Arabian nights fairy                 that couldn't possibly
       tale."                                         work.

           p. 29, Chapter IV "Radio Trap"             The original working
                                                      title was clearly
       I think I finally got it:                      "The Devil's Honeycomb".
       he's going "ooo-EEE-oooo".


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