![]() ![]() There`s severe tropical heat and humidity, no communication or towns for hundreds of miles, diseases like yellow fever and beri-beri, and assorted vicious and deadly creatures packed so densely that they just about trip over each other- the giant anaconda, jaguars, leaping spiders and fire ants, snakes and poisonous centipedes and everything short of Velociraptors. Tarzan's Africa seems like the Adirondack State Park compared to the jungles of Brazil. Our heroes have their hands full in any case. Anti-German feeling didn't die down for quite a while after World War I, and heroes in pulp fiction of that time often seemed inclined to want to start the war up all over again.) (It's worth noting that the adventurers have a grudge against Schwandorf even before they meet him because he's German, and Tim says that no truce had been reached when the three explorers had left the States. But right off the bat, there's trouble in the form of a Prussian brute named Karl Schwandorf, who immediately begins to scheme against them for his own vile reasons. The lost millionaire has been reported to have gone native, running around nearly naked with a bow, frightening traders and acting pretty much insane.The three heroes have been commissioned to find the wild millionaire and return him back to the States. McKay and his two companions (a boisterous redhead named Tim Ryan and a bland blond named Meredith Knowlton) are in the scary jungles of Brazil to try and locate a missing heir to a fortune. Also interesting to Avenger fans is that McKay is shot in the head and drops seemingly killed but actually was only creased across the top of the skull and quickly bounces back. All he needs is some scars and a sullen expression. Of the three American adventurers, McKay was "the tallest, lean-bodied but broad-shouldered, black of hair and gray of eye." Sounds familiar. In the first paragraph we meet Roderick McKay, recently a captain in the US Army and still called "Cap". ![]() ![]() In this book on hand, I can see many writing tricks and techniques that popped up later in Howard`s work. Howard should know that Friel was a big influence on him, mentioned in his letters and papers. There are more twists and fascinating incidents in here than in most of the 600 page clunkers that thrillers have become.įans of Robert E. Friel was a good, solid storyteller who knew how to build suspense and surprise the reader his dialogue is a little old-fashioned but always believable. I hate to keep saying this, but here`s another fine storyteller whose books deserve to be on library shelves and bookstore displays. As well as this book, he wrote many others, including TIGER RIVER, THE KING OF NO MAN'S LAND, THE TAILED MEN, THE RIVER OF SEVEN STARS and MOUNTAINS OF MYSTERY. Rider Haggard and Talbot Mundy, but because he had actually done some exploring in South America himself, his descriptions and detail are especially convincing and vivid. Friel (1885-1959) wrote in the tradition of H. From the October and November 1921 issues of ADVENTURE(where it was serialized before being reprinted in hardcover), this is a fine example of classic pulp adventure. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |