This latest entry in The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage is a sequel to one of the original pulp novels by Lester Dent. I won't say which one because that would be a spoiler of sorts, but anyone who's read it will recognize it right away. I recall reading that particular novel at my aunt's house in Blanket, Texas more than 50 years ago, and I'm sure the thought that I'd be reading a sequel to it half a century later never occurred to me.
That said, I'm really glad I did, because I thoroughly enjoyed MR. CALAMITY. It's one of the rare Doc Savage novels that's also a Western of sorts, being set in Wyoming and featuring cowboys and rustlers galloping around on horseback and firing six-shooters. Of course, there's plenty of the usual Doc Savage superscience, too, in this tale of something that makes gravity go wild so that objects--including human beings--go flying in the air, sometimes all the way to the stratosphere.
This one starts when Pat Savage, Doc's gorgeous, trouble-hunting cousin, is prospecting in the badlands near a ranch that Doc's associate Long Tom Roberts (the electronics genius) inherited from an uncle. Pat spies a man swimming in mid-air, hundreds of feet high. When the effect wears off, he plunges to his death. He won't be the last such victim of this mystery.
Doc, Renny, and Johnny show up eventually. (You know who Renny and Johnny are, right? Colonel John Renwick and William Harper Littlejohn?) Much action ensues. People die, including some you wouldn't expect. Murray does a fine job with the Western setting and elements. I've been to some of the places he writes about in this novel, and he captures them perfectly. There's a big twist that every Doc Savage fan will see coming a mile away, and as far as I'm concerned, that's part of the charm of the series and the way it ought to be. Man, did I have fun reading this book. If you're a Doc fan, you will, too. I guarantee it. Highly recommended.
