Book Review: The Avenger: Roaring Heart of the Crucible edited by Nancy Holder & Joe Gentile
Moonstone Books is a publisher that specializes in new material about pulp magazine characters. This is their third anthology of stories about Richard Henry Benson, the Avenger, and his organization, Justice, Inc.
For those who have not heard of the character before, Richard Henry Benson had his wife and child taken from him in a bizarre midair disappearance. The shock of this and the claims that they had never been on the plane in the first place drove Mr. Benson to a nervous breakdown. When he recovered his sanity, he found that his skin and hair had lost their pigmentation, and his face was now frozen.
In the process of tracking the criminals responsible, Mr. Benson became the Avenger and began assembling his team.
The fourteen stories in this volume are mostly inserted into the “classic” period of the original series, before “Murder on Wheels”, which changed the premise somewhat. Some of the stories are very precisely placed indeed. This means that Cole Wilson, who only joined Justice, Inc. at the end of “Murder on Wheels”, is absent from most of the book. Perhaps fittingly, then, “An Excellent Beauty” by C.J. Henderson is a solo outing for this agent, with a twisted focus on his distinguishing feature of being “handsome.”
The most famous author in this anthology is Will Murray, whose “The Moth Murders” leads off the book. It’s an appropriately creepy story, with a horrific murder method, a bizarre antagonist and an almost plausible explanation to end the story.
Another standout story is “The Box of Flesh” by Barry Reese, in which two seemingly unrelated investigations converge at the crossroads of stage magic and folklore. It’s almost as creepy as the title makes it sound.
Most of the stories stay within the customary adventure pulp limit of “almost plausible,” but a couple do go straight into the science fiction genre. There are also a number of references to other pulp characters, with the Domino Lady making a full guest appearance in “According to Plan of a One-Eyed Trickster” by Win Scott Eckert, which follows on from his stories in the two previous anthologies in this series.
While the stories are generally good about explaining who the characters are (and thus can get a little repetitious in this area), for best effect, a reader should already be familiar with the Avenger characters; I recommend looking up a reprint of the first two or three stories in the original series. Also, the book could have used another proofreading pass, as there are a couple of obvious typos.
If you are already an Avenger fan, or know one, this is a fun book. You might also consider looking at the previous two volumes.
