The Avenger: Roaring Heart of the Crucible

This novel is actually an anthology by many authors including Matthew Baugh, James Chambers, Greg Cox, Win Scott Eckert, CJ Henderson, Michael May, Matthew P Mayo, Will Murray, Bobby Nash, Mel Odom, Barry Reese, Chris Sequiera, John Allen Small and David White.

There are fourteen tales of the Avenger and his crew spread across the years of his career, and they are in no particular order. My experience before this with the Avenger was limited to the original novel some thirty years ago and possibly one or two more. I like the character well enough, but to me he was never a ‘Doc Savage’.

The Avenger is a man who had a terrible loss, both his wife and daughter were taken from him, presumed murdered by criminals and never found. This girded him into an almost inhuman machine that sought nothing but justice for those in similar situations. The Avenger has a few special abilities which I won’t get into here.

Suffice to say the volume is filled with very exciting and action filled stories about the Avenegr and his crew. Smitty, Nellie (Smitty’s lady love), the dour scotsman Mac, as well as Josh and his wife Roseamund.

Not all of the characters are in all of the stories, in fact the last tale I was pleasantly surprised to find the two most popular members of Doc Savage’s supporting cast involved in the story. They were not named, but you know it was Monk and Ham. That was a very pleasant surprise.

All in all this was a very enjoyable volume. It had loads of action and interesting stories throughout. There wasn’t a clunker amongst them. It was fun reading about a character I knew so little about and still be able to follow along. The assembled authors did a very nice job with these tales of the Avenger.

This has a great cover too, by the way. Highly recommended.