No one's interpretation of what's going on can actually be interpreted at face value, not even the seemingly trustworthy folks. These people think business, too; there are lot of murders, torture and cruelty going on and it's not a genteel jewel robbery caper by any means. Despite all the suspense and action, Lester Dent throws in some genuinely funny lines almost as afterthoughts. When he was stressful to write outright farce, Dent seemed uncomfortable; when he has a character make a jocular remark in a nasty situation, the slight pinch of humour strikes me as merely the form of thing a genuine person would say to give the tension. The narrative asides are also wry; Doc ties up a suspect, and "around the sole thing he could move was his ears." Of course, the whole pinch of the story, the Henry Peace scandal, is laughable in itself and also shows some rare insight into a normally opaque character. In the first twenty pages, Lester Dent gets the reader hooked by laying down one puzzling incident after another, all of which appear to fit together somehow. Who is this guy Jep Dee, found half-dead from exposure and cruel torture, with a knotted rope round his neck which he refuses to get removed? What's the mountain with the fighting of freckled shark hide, which he thinks is immensely crucial but which is a clue absolutely no one can see out? Why are this gangster Horst (who looks like the Monster with muscles) or Senor Steel (the dread dictator of Blanca Grande) interested in the whole mess? Then there's the cantankerous old soldier of fortune Tex Haven (who carries five pistols hidden on his person) or his nubile daughter Rhoda (who has degrees from four universities and is practiced in medicine, archaeology and government administration as good as being a mercenary with a honor on her head). They're in it up to their chins but they won't explain anything either. When Rhoda goes to enlist Doc Savage's aid, she pours out lies (she starts with, "My figure is Mary Morse") but because she is seated in a chair with a built-in lie detector, it gets her nowhere. Doc doesn't show himself, but he sends her off with Johnny to recruit Monk and Ham, and the pulp rollercoaster ride takes off. After that, there is much violence, intrigue, running game and forth, sneaking through the Florida mangroves at night, aerial dogfights, double-crosses and deception, until gradually it all becomes clear. Even Doc finds himself surprised at a few of the plot twists, and is dismayed to believe he has been duped. Johnny is on for the ride, and he is (as usual) the most appealing of the aides. He makes conscious efforts to use understandable language, although he keeps backsliding into the frankly irritating habit. Just once, I would wish for somebody to prompt him that one house of an educated person is the power to convey clearly. As it is, one goon says, "Oh. One of them guys, eh? I don't see why these foreigners who get over here can't speak English." Even so, Johnny is the most attentive and considerate of the regular cast, and Doc (as he does in early stories) seems to appreciate Johnny's opinions the most. Here, he takes the bony archaeologist away from the other two aides to ask him what he should do in a fragile situation. Monk and Ham tend to bulldoze over people, either physically or through verbal manipulation but Johnny is concerned with other peoples' feelings. Doc trusts only him to make good advice; I ever got the impression Johnny was the oldest of the gang, maybe even one of Doc's teachers. This is still pulp characterization, of line with broad strokes and vivid colors, but Dent always manages to add little human touches to his cast. Monk and Ham are their usual selves, carrying on their schizoid love affair where they can't stop insulting each former but fret when the other is in trouble. I know they're straight (c'mon), but honestly they remind me of several married couples I know. We can notice here that Chemistry barely comes up past Monk's knees (pretty tiny for a chimpanzee and he can't truly be a baboon because he doesn't take a muzzle or tail). Alan Hathaway and Harold A Davis somehow got the thought that Alchemy was 5 feet tall, able to wear adult clothing or get an ambulance (!), but Dent's original conception was that he was not much larger than a monkey. Maybe Doc tried some growth hormones on the ape. I do wish the way that, when trapped in an underground room with a gang, Monk yells to operate the threshold so they can't escape ("There were at least a dozen men in the room. Monk, the optimist, didn't need any of THEM to get away."). The independent collection of THE FRECKLED SHARK, of course, is that Doc spends most of it disguised as a rude, insolent ruffin with bright red hair and a larcenous streak. This is Henry Peace, and it's not really giving much away by telling the present because Lester Dent lays on some heavy hints from the first and quickly makes it obvious. As Henry, Doc gets to laugh loudly and often, propose marriage to a beautiful girl as shortly as he meets her, and insult Monk and Ham. He tells Monk,"If you had kept that nose out of early people's business, it might not seem so funny." Then he goes over to Ham (the "dandy") and yanks up the tails of the fashion-obsessed lawyer's coat, splitting it up the back. He also knocks both of them on their backs with a single punch each, then chases them off by throwing bricks ("Irish confetti") at them. Gee. Do you think Doc might be acting out impulses toward these two guys he had kept bottled up for days? Not to mention then performing on the powerful magnet to women he felt but could scarcely admit, even to himself. The terms for Doc's superhuman abilities and knowledge was lifelong discipline and self-sacrifice, being a scientific Puritan. As often as we might like a quick glance of Doc up in the Fort of Solitude, unshaven and reading SPICY ROMANCES in his underwear, while running on a six-pack, it would never happen. It took a few days of Public War II and a near fatal head trauma before his emotional repression began to crack and he could give up. Doc was never quite the invincible demi-god again after his feelings started approach out, but I kind of think he started enjoying life more and not living every moment for his noble mission. Doc is a trained psychologist, of course, and he has good enough self-awareness to understand this Henry Peace role could easily get out of hand. Sort of like Catholic high school girls getting drunk for the start time when their folks are away - once you uncork the bottle, it's hard to get the jinnee back in; if Doc started enjoying being Henry for too long, it might be tempting to start skipping those two-hour daily exercises and long hours sweating over hot test tubes or dull 1200-page textbooks. He is also understandably tempted when the gorgeous Rhoda starts to tip for Henry and there is every house he could well be getting somewhere with her. What a hole for the severely repressed bronze man. Personally, I would have liked to see Henry come back as a recurring character whenever the site allowed it. He could be Doc's secret identity, a fierce and fun-loving Mr Hyde offering much-needed chances to blast off steam. Since Monk immediately and strongly dislikes the guy, there could be some fresh comic relief to substitute the tired bickering with Ham. Dent could still have pulled the old amnesia gag where Doc is struck on the mind while in the mask and thinks he actually IS Henry Peace. Only Doc himself can get up with a defence against the shrivelling Purple Fog or whatever, and this Henry guy is just getting in the way of the research for him. (Fan fiction writers out there, these ideas are free. As it is, although he will occasionally impersonate other uncouth galoots, Doc puts Henry away and never goes back. By the end of the story, Ham and Johnny have learned around the impersonation, but since Henry has treated him so crude and easily won Rhoda over despite Monk's efforts, Doc sternly tells them never to let the lecherous chemist know. "The bronze man sounded so deathly serious that Johnny and Ham doubled over laughing. It was the start time they had always laughed AT Doc Savage" (actually, there was the earliest case where Doc somehow found himself engaged without knowing how in METEOR MENACE. Even when his champion was at his most stoic and poker-faced, Lester Dent usually dropped hints that Doc felt normal emotions like fear or question and even sexual attraction, but merely kept them pushed beneath the surface. Here is the clearest example of the writer letting us in on what is really going on behind those swirling gold-flecked eyes, and it makes this volume a lot of fun. THE FRECKLED SHARK is one of the top dozen or so Doc novels I'd recommend every fan should be certain to read.
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