TITLE: Hunt the Avenger
AUTHOR: Win Scott Eckert
130 pages, Moonstone Books, ISBN 9781328916280 (Hardcover and e-book)
DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Out of tragedy, a hero is born! In the roaring heart of the crucible, steel is made. In the raging flame of personal tragedy, men are sometimes forged into something more than human.
A figure of ice and steel, Richard Benson is an avatar of vengeance—a chilled impersonal force of justice masking a cold genius and nearly supernatural power behind a face as white and still as arctic frost. His pale eyes, like a polar dawn, only hint at the terrible force evildoers heedlessly unleashed the day they created…The Avenger!
In the annals of Justice, Inc.’s battles against spies, crooks, and killers, only one malefactor has escaped The Avenger’s clutches not once, but twice—Baron Ulrich Blau-Montag, the half-man, half-machine known as the Iron Skull! But when Benson and his cohorts partner with the mysterious and saucy Domino Lady to hunt down the demented half-robot, and go on to clash with other supervillains, such as the Nazi spy Werner Konrad and a diabolical weapons dealer known as the Countess, a frightening pattern emerges…are they the creatures of a hidden puppetmaster? And is Benson the hunter? Or the prey?
MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
MY THOUGHTS: If you’re a fan of the original pulp magazine adventurers or the characters who have followed in their footsteps over the decades since the pulps died, you can’t go wrong with this mosaic novel by Win Scott Eckert, one of the best of the “new pulp” writers. Hunt the Avenger is a fun combination of three previously-published short stories bookended by two new stories that create a fast-paced narrative whole.
When Eckert writes about previously-existing characters like Richard Benson, he does his research. In this case, he fully immersed himself in the original pulp Avenger novels by Paul Ernst and the handful of official 1970s follow-ups by Ron Goulart, as well as all of the Domino Lady’s appearances. He understands the history and nuance of the characters and it shows throughout the book. That being said, readers meeting The Avenger and the Domino Lady for the first time via this book will not be confused or lost. Eckert doesn’t assume his readers are as deeply familiar with the characters as he is; he works in plenty of details (without info-dumping) to help new readers understand Benson, his Justice Inc. support team, their sometimes-ally The Domino Lady, and the villains being faced. (For the record, the book’s Frontispiece helpfully lists all of the canonical Avenger works.)
One of the reasons I find Eckert such a talented new pulp writer is that he respects the traditions and cadences of the pulp style without falling into the racist/misogynistic traps of the time. He retains key phrases from the pulps to describe characters (like Nellie Gray being described as a “porcelain doll,” and frequent references to the low-cut revealing nature of the Domino Lady’s outfits) but he also shows just how smart and capable these women are consistently throughout the book. Benson may be the title (and focal) character but the women in his adventures here are not just arm- and eye-candy. If the licensing could be worked out and his schedule allowed, I’d love to see Eckert write an adventure featuring the Domino Lady, Nellie Gray, Rosabel Newton, and perhaps the Shadow’s Margo Lane and Doc Savage’s cousin Patricia.
Of course, there are the by-now requisite winks and nods at The Avenger’s contemporaries. I may have missed a few but there are definitely veiled references to Doc Savage, the Shadow, and the Spider that will please fans of the interconnected “Crossover Universe” idea that Eckert and most of his peers work in. And there are nods to a variety of concepts originally introduced by the great Philip Jose Farmer as well.
Hunt the Avenger is only available through the publisher, Moonstone Books. I picked up the now-out-of-print hardcover edition. A check of the website indicates that the paperback is still available as of the writing of this review.