The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2

Sting In The Tale

The Complete Adventures 
of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2
by Lee Savage Jr and Emmett McDowell
Altus Press
ISBN 9781618270702

Following on from the first volume (reviewed by me here), The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2 is the concluding collection of stories originally appearing in issues of the pulp magazine Action Stories between 1945 and 1949. And, having read the first volume, I’d have to say that these particular stories are not what I was expecting. 

Following an introduction by modern pulp writer Will Murray (one of the modern writers of Doc Savage who actually gets the formula right), we plummet straight into the first of the four stories collected here, Brand Of The Gallows-Ghost, from the Winter 1945 issue. 

This one, like many of the Señorita Scorpion stories, doesn’t feature the Scorpion, aka Elgera Douglas, herself in all that many sequences. She pops up here and there while other characters, like her romantic interest Chisos Owens, shouldering the majority of the action and deduction of the tale. The secret ingredient being that, as usual, everybody is talking about Elgera and she’s the focus point for the solution to the story. This yarn is pretty good and, once again, Lee Savage Jr uses his expressive language to craft a quite literary pulp, with wonderful passages like... “The moonlight dropped hesitant yellow fingers into the mysterious depths of Santa Helena Canyon…”. 

It’s all the standard Western tinted blood and thunder you could want... with a curious character name popping up. One of the female characters in the book is called Lupita Tovar and, I can only assume this is in homage to the 1920s-1950s Mexican actress of the same name, who my regular readers might remember best as being in the Spanish version of the 1931 Dracula, made on the same sets as the Lugosi Dracula (both reviewed here) during the evenings of the same shoot. 

The second story, Lash Of The Six Gun Queen, from the Winter 1947 edition of Action Stories, is where things get and, frankly, stay a little weird concerning the stories in this volume. This one is probably the stand out story in this collection but, unusually, it’s told in the first person from the point of view of a new character trying to bring Señorita Scorpion to justice (before falling for her and finding her innocent of her supposed crimes in the third act) rather than the standard third person. A good tale, though, nonetheless.

Then things get even weirder with the Winter 1948 tale Gun-Witch of Hoodoo Range, written this time by Emmett McDowell instead of regular writer Lee Savage Jr... and that change of writer shows in more than just the style, which is less expressive and poetic than Savage Jr’s prose (although it certainly has its moments too). However, the character of the Scorpion does not seem to be remotely like she was in the other books, always going around masked to hide a scar which she never previously had and with absolutely nobody referring to Elgera Douglas, nor indeed Chisos Owens, who is absent from both this story and, surprisingly, the next. In fact, the Scorpion in this is revealed to be a new love interest for a new character, who is the focal point of this one (none of the regular characters are in this at all) and, it’s revealed at the end that she duped everyone and that the real Señorita Scorpion died of wounds received half way through the tale. Wait... what?

This is a twist which is completely ignored when Lee Savage Jr returns to write the final tale, from Winter 1949, The Sting Of The Scorpion. This one has no mention of the events in the previous tale (as that one did of no events prior) and we definitely are back in the saddle with Elgera Douglas as the original Scorpion once more. 

That being said, this one differs from the others in that, a) there’s no Chisos Owens turning up or even mentioned here and b) this one stays with the Scorpion and she’s the main attraction of every story element, as we follow her adventure while she tries to prove her innocence, find out why she is being framed and identify who is doing it. It’s a pretty good tale but with no warning that it was intended to be the last. Actually, the main takeaway I got from the last two stories in this volume, both by different writers, is that a scabbard is not something which (unlike what the dictionary says) is just for holding swords. In these last two it’s referred to as the long holster on a horse which holds the rifles for the rider. So that was an interesting discovery... I need to do more research into that, I think. 

And there you have it. The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2 is very much a different experience to the first volume but, this makes it no less entertaining and I certainly had a good time with it. It’s a shame Lee Savage Jr never returned to the character but I understand there’s a newish, overpriced, short volume of three modern tales by different writers which I may have to look into at some point in the near future... so there’s that to look forward to.

The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1

On A Sting And A Prairie

The Complete Adventures 
of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1
By Les Savage Jr.
Altus Press
ISBN: 9781453645376

Her kiss was flame, Her gun was doom!

In his foreword to the Altus Press compendium of tales, The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1, modern pulp writer Will Murray (who I best know for his modern takes on Doc Savage and The Shadow) talks about the writer of these tales, Les Savage Jr... which is handy because I knew nothing about him or his Señorita Scorpion yarns before now. He was apparently born in 1922 and died young at around 36 years of age but, though young, I can tell you he certainly has all the skills of a good pulp wordsmith. Perhaps he’s not quite as eloquent as Lester Dent’s Kenneth Robeson alter ego but, certainly head and shoulders above Walter Gibson’s Maxwell Grant, in my opinion. 

These first four yarns were published in the Spring, Summer and Winter 1944 issues of Action Stories and the Spring issue of the same magazine of the following year. They were apparently quite popular and, according to the intro, might well have even been an influence on various Hollywood contrivances such as the serial Zorro’s Black Whip (reviewed by me here).

Señorita Scorpion is the secret identity of Elgera Douglas, a woman whose family was trapped for generations in a secret area by a mountain and who, now the family has found a way out of the valley in which they were once trapped, operates out of this secret location... where no person alive who does not know her could find the secret entrance to. Yeah... actually, this really is Republic Pictures serial material, for sure. 

Enter Chisos Owens, the cool hunk of a man who is the only one who, by the end of the first tale after tracking her down, working initially for a man who did him wrong... can win her heart. Adventures ensue. Most of them involving the titular lady’s secret ranch and threat to its ownership from various parties. More regular characters get added to the roster, including a sheriff who is caught in a triangle with Owens for her affections. 

And it’s pretty good stuff. The lead in to the tales often seems to be approached by some other character (sometimes Chisos Owens and sometimes someone else like a villain) and while the lady is a formidable adversary, she’s not above being rescued in damsel in distress mode at various points in the narrative... although she does a fair amount of rescuing of people herself, to tell the truth.

The tales are quite addictive and also very descriptive of landscapes and situations. Being Western tales, some fight is often started at the drop of a hat and there are many metaphorical hats plummeting to the ground in these tales. One thing Savage Jr seems to have a neat gift for is the prose of the various gunfights and especially the fist fights that pepper his tales at regular intervals. Heck, one fistfight in the third story here, between the two characters vying for the affections of Douglas (before they all become friends, naturally), seems to go on for several pages with no let up. They are often quite violent too... one man gets a pick axe through his face in one story, for example... but don’t really dwell too much on the gory aftermath (the same chap comes back a little later with a bandage on his face with no real description of his wounds). 

Another specialty of the writer seems to be in making me reach for a dictionary every five minutes. Because the narrative deals with a lot of Western terms and iconography related to Texas and Mexico that I have just not come across before. So Vaqueros, Viejos and Wickiups were briefly on my radar, as were various native American plants and other terms for things which I’d never come across previously, mainly because I don’t think I’ve read any ‘wild west’ fiction before. 

Plus, I’d assumed the writer had made a mistake when an imposter posing as the reincarnated Montezuma, who is mind controlling various ‘good guys’ with peyote to help raise an army to wipe out the white man in America... fires four shots at an enemy with his derringer. However, there were indeed some four barrelled derringers around at the time. Something which I must have just plain forgot, since Sabata uses one in a number of his films. 

There is a slight continuity error, it seems to me, going through the stories, which are all set a little time after the previous adventure. The four tales are called Señorita Scorpion, The Brand Of Senorita Scorpion, Secret of Santiago and The Curse of Montezuma but, at the end of the third tale, after finding a hidden, secret gold mine with large bars of gold stored there, Elgera Douglas and her friends are rich. Why then, when her ranch is destroyed at the start of the fourth tale, does this leave her bankrupt... it kinda makes no sense, to tell the truth but, yeah, I liked these stories so much I’ll let that one slide. 

And I think that about does me with The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1, certainly enough to know that I’ll be buying both the second volume at some point soon plus another collection of stories from modern writers continuing her tales. If you are into the fast paced, rip roaring pulp fiction of the 1940s then you will probably have as much of a blast with this one as I did. This one may well be worth rounding up for your book case. 

Doc Savage: The Infernal Buddha

Buddha Keen, A Contender

Doc Savage The Infernal Buddha
by Will Murray 
writing as Kenneth Robeson
Altus Press 
ISBN: 978-1618270597

Warning: There are some spoilers in this review. Sorry.

So here we have the third of Will Murray’s second batch of Doc Savage novels (also reviewed here and here), following on from the batch he wrote in the early 1990s. Once again it’s a tale of high adventure using some of the characters we’re all familiar with from the original Lester Dent stories of the 1930s and onwards and, as usual with this guys work on the series, it’s got a lot going for it and Murray proves himself a more than worthy successor to the legacy of Street and Smith Publications' house name Kenneth Robeson.

This novel is a bit of a curious one in what you are actually getting, in terms of maybe a little more deviation from the formula than you might be comfortable with... although I think in this case, when respectfully done, it refreshes and updates, in the most positive way, the franchise for a new generation of readers (much like what Russel T. Davies did with Doctor Who a few years back). Different from the usual formula in that, while it all locks together as a single story, the structure of this one is such that it’s almost like it’s split into two different mini adventures. If I were any kind of football fan I might say it’s definitely a novel of two halves... but I’m not so I’ll try to make myself a little clearer.

The story involves a bunch of pirates headed by the first main villain of the piece, who comes into possession of an artefact called the Buddha’s Toe... which is about as dangerous a weapon as you’re going to get. Something happens when you open the box that houses the Buddha’s Toe, in that everything from the area in front of the box is dried up and made devoid of moisture, including people who quickly mummify up and die in seconds if they’re not beating a very hasty retreat. Doc Savage becomes embroiled in the affair and he obviously makes it his business to get the toe out of the hands of the murdering pirates who would possess it for themselves and unleash a deadly force which could destroy the world without even knowing what they are doing... and this he achieves in the first half of the book... the lead pirate mummifying to death in the power struggle which takes place, for the most part, on an island. Then things get more complicated as the Buddha’s Toe is merely a fragment of another artefact with the same properties, only much larger and more threatening.

The second half of the story follows Doc as he poses as a pirate in an attempt to wrest control of the more powerful artefact form the obsessive Japanese destroying Chinese cutthroats who would unleash it’s power in a similarly ignorant attempt to control a force that would be best left outside of their grasp. Things get a bit dicey for Doc and the gang but it all works out in the end... as you can probably guess.

An interesting and, for me, disappointing thing about this novel was that not all of The Amazing Five, Doc’s gang of aides, are present in the story. This is nothing new for the Doc Savage stories, and as the original thrillers used to be absent a number of the five towards the end of the run in 1949, you can’t fault Murray for jettisoning a few characters that he thought might have either been clogging up the action or providing too much of a deux ex machina in their collaboration in this story. So this one just features Monk, Ham and Rennie as Doc’s invaluable aides. I was distraught that Patricia Savage didn’t make the cut in this one either... I always like the stories where Doc’s cousin Pat is present, bronzed amazon adventuress that she is.

What you do get in this one is a more vulnerable Doc who does often find himself in situations which he doesn’t quite know how to handle. Now don’t panic, I know how that’s going to sound to any Savage fan, but you needn’t worry because the character in the original stories did used to have occasional brushes with uncertainty every now and again too. Let’s face it, although people lionise their heroes because of their superhuman, less flawed characteristics... that can sometimes make for a dull story. Instead, Murray gives us a version of Doc who has to rely on his wits just a little more than usual but, like I said, it’s not a bad call and, as long as he doesn’t start doing this in every novel, I personally think it’s acceptable once in a while. Not that he’s writing these for me, of course.

An especially great touch is when Doc loses his metal skull cap. It wasn’t mentioned too much in the original tales, as far as I recall, but it was certainly a part of the character which has always been there right from the beginning. Doc Savage’s fine hair is actually a facsimile of the same hair which sits underneath a metal skullcap, used to deflect bullets if Doc has to go diving head first into a brawl... it’s a stupid but brilliant invention and it's typical of the 1930s culture that spawned it. Like I said, it’s always there but rarely referred to this pointedly in the original series... and here, Murray spotlights it in one scene and uses it to make the hero even more vulnerable in a tight position. Using this stuff as a dramatic device is a good call and it works really well here because long term fans of the series will get another hit of “Savage nostalgia” while it also serves to put the key characters under more pressure. Bravo, Mr. Murray.

My one big complaint, and its a similar one I had when I was reading the denouement of his earlier novel Doc Savage: The Desert Demons (reviewed here), is that although the less than understandable destructive power of the Infernal Buddha is explained away in typical, for the series, scientific manner... the origin of the artefact in question is less explainable and relies on the reader swallowing a possible extraterrestrial origin. I personally think this is less than acceptable in a series that only once (to my knowledge), in its original incarnation, presented the “object of mystery”, as something genuinely unexplainable for Doc... which is something which was saved for his very last adventure, Up From Earth’s Centre, when the pulp magazine was cancelled. So, yeah, I would have preferred a lot more down to earth explanation for the title’s artefact in this story, methinks, but ultimately it didn’t detract too much from a solid adventure yarn, on the whole.

Also, while the cover artwork is another triumph of fantastic painting, I thought the subject matter was a little less in keeping with the spirit of the covers that have come before it over the last 80 years and it also spoils one of the possible surprises in one of the chapters... instead of letting realisation slowly dawn as to the identity of a new character arrival, we just have to remember the front cover illustration. So that could possibly have tipped novice Doc Savage readers off... seasoned readers will have jumped on it anyway as soon as the character appears.

All in all, though, I have to say that I really enjoyed this one and am especially looking forward to the March 80th anniversary story where Doc Savage crosses paths with another famous 1930s icon, King Kong. Can’t wait for that one. The Infernal Buddha is definitely a delight to read, however, and gets a hefty recommendation from me for any fans of the character who are still willing to go along for the ride. Good stuff!