Paul Ernst - Dr. Satan

Doctor Satan: A scream from the office of Arthur B. Ryan, President of a huge New York import company. His secretary emerges ashen faced, promptly collapses on the floor. The sales manager rushes past her into the office and reemerges, babbling incoherently about "his head". What's the matter with his head, ventures one of the girls from the typing pool? "A tree growing out of his head ... a tree .... pushing out of his skull, like a plant cracking a flower-pot it outgrows, and sends branches through the cracks ..."

Five minutes later and a second powerful businessman, Samuel Billingsley, dies in identical fashion. A third, Ballard W. Walstead, receives a note advising him that "You are hereby given a chance to purchase a continuation of your rather useless life. The price of this continuation is the round sum of one million dollars." The message is signed - 'Dr. Satan'!

Being a man in the know, Walstead approaches the only person who can help him - Ascot Keane. Keane is a wealthy dilettante, famed for his love of first editions, ponies and big game hunting, but very few are aware that he is also "the greatest criminal investigator that ever lived." Walstead trowels on the flattery- you're great, you are! some of your cases could only have been solved by black magic", etc - but a fat lot of good it does him. Keane knows Dr Satan has already planted the evil seed inside him and sure enough, hardly has Walstead left the office than the first twigs are forcing their way out of his cranium.

Enter Beatrice Dale, Keane's beautiful, innocent secretary. For possibly the only time in her life she admonishes the man she secretly worships - how could he just let the man go to his doom like that? Keane is in the middle of explaining how there was nothing he could do when a blue flame out of nowhere torches his favourite chair! So, Dr. Satan knows he's onto him!

Now we're inside the headquarters of the evil genius. Dr. Satan, in full Lucifer garb, flanked by henchmen Girse and Bostiff, is entertaining young Monroe, the one man who knows his real identity and everything about him. Satan effortlessly puts this grasping upstart under hypnosis and gets him to step inside a metal coffin. The blue flame voodoo curse which narrowly failed to see off Keane works its magic and - instant cremation! Forget the overly elaborate death tree business, thinks Dr. Satan; this more efficient and cost-effective method will do for the meddling busy-body Ascot Keane!

The searingly painful deaths by skull-busting tree are good, but after a promising and very hectic start, Dr. Satan fizzles out, Ernst obviously having been more concerned with setting up the basis for a series than throwing everything into a strong first installment.

Hollywood Horror: The central sound stage at RGR studios and we're just about to watch the great star Joan Harwell rehearse a scene for Enchanted Island. A young electrician is nervous. He's had a premonition of disaster, but his buddy tells him to forget it, like these guys are going to cancel a $44, 000 shoot just because some loser has got the willies? That said, Joan looks pretty ill up there and the director asks if she's OK to continue. Trouper that she is, Joan gives the melodrama her all, but there's clearly something very wrong as, before their horrified eyes, her face starts to disappear until all they're left to drool over is a gorgeous body, seductively revealed by a cream satin negligee - but a body on which was nothing but a grinning skull!

Shortly after Joan's messy suicide (shears), and A. R. Stang, the President of RGR is the second victim of Dr. Satan's latest invention, though his physician assures him that it's not all bad news; his face and arm are still in tact, it's just that they're no longer visible to the human eye. Ascott Keane shows at an extraordinary general meeting of the eight most powerful men in Hollywood where Bertrand C. Russell, the big cheese at Acme pictures, is preparing to pay Dr. Satan's customary ransom demand and, there's a pattern emerging as the story again dips when Keane joins the fray. Told to name his own fee if he'll only deliver the industry from Dr. Satan, the detective assures them he's already wealthy enough and "I'm working to rid the world of a monster that will be emperor of all crime if he cannot be defeated!" Meanwhile, said monster has converted his new toy into an "atom collapser" or shrinking ray. Forget the overly elaborate molecule re-aligning invisible beam, thinks Dr. Satan; this more efficient and cost-effective method will do for the meddling busy-body Ascot Keane!

The Consuming Flame: Detroit, 193-, and Dr. Satan is up to his usual harnessing the forces of nature to do his wicked business which, in this instance, is incinerating the motor city's prime movers by means of static electricity and a gadget affixed to trains, planes, automobiles depending on their mode of travel. As ever, two murders in and the third target recieves a ransom demand. As ever, Ascott Keane is almost fatally killed while speeding in his coupe. But The Consuming Flame improves on it's predecessors because at last Beatrice Dale is given something to do, even if it is only to get herself bound, gagged and injected with a zombie drug. Not only does this make Bostiff's day - that's him, swaying on his knuckles "in a sort of escstacy" - even the evil genius feels a stirring beneath his snazzy red cloak.

''You are beautiful. I am alone in the world — and it is not inappropriate that Lucifer take a consort. But that consort should not be a mere living woman such as lesser beings have. You noticed the watchman as you were borne into this place?''
Keane saw a spasm twitch Beatrice's face, saw her eyes wince with terror.
"I see you did,'' Doctor Satan said. ''And I see you sensed his state. A dead man, my dear — yet a man who will breathe and move in a sort of suspended animation as long as I shall will it. A man whose automa­tic reflexes can still dimly function, so that the dead brain may direct the muscles of throat and lips to answer verbally any questions not too complex, and so that the body may move to orders not too difficult.''
Doctor Satan's grating, inhuman laugh sounded out. ''It comes to my mind,'' he said, ''that Lucifer might here find a fitting mate. The devil's consort — death. A beautiful woman who must answer as required, and who must move without question to fulfill her master's least demand. That would be unique — and amusing. Think how Ascots Keane would react to that.''

Whereas Dr. Satan and Hollywood Horror all but splutter out midway, The Consuming Flame benefits from a far better showdown during the course of which one of the Devil Doctor's right hand men is blasted into a charred spot (don't worry: he returns for the next one).

hi shonokin

I've not got the ebooks, so can't recommend them, but Robert Weinberg manages to cram five Dr Satan novellas into eighty pages of admittedly close type while others read in Startling Mystery Stories average around 25 pages each. Assuming The Man Who Chained The Lightning isn't a full-length novel, I reckon all the Dr. Satan stories would easily fit into a 200-250 page paperback. So, the ebooks are most likely on the small side, but not sure you'll find the complete adventures anywhere else at that price. If you decide to go with it, I'd be interested in your opinion on the stories.

Oh damn. Sorry to hear that, shonokin. In that case, the blurb for the first booklet is very misleading, as it implies you're getting more than just the title story:

"Whether Doctor Satan is preying on rich men in Wall Street, or ruthlessly spreading panic terror in Hollywood, or striking the winter tourist influx at Miami with ghostly death, we know that you will be fascinated with the harrowing adventures of Doctor Satan and Ascott Keane. As the editor of Weird Tales wrote, "Each of these stories is a genuine weird tale, eery. uncanny and permeated with an icy breath of horror like a cold breeze from the tomb."

Not much consolation to you, I know, but will amend the info in the original post. Hope you enjoy the stories anyway!

I'm up to book 6 of FATE by one of my favourite authors. I haven't enjoyed one of them yet and I've got another nine to get before the pain is over....