A New Pulp series that recently caught my eye is The Shattered Men, the first in the “Amazing Adventures of Wild Inc.,” by Jack MacKenzie. The cover intrigued me as it was clearly inspired by the Bantam Doc Savage covers. More on that later.
In this story, we first start off in Sicily 20 years prior when a young mother is tortured by Mafioso to learn where her husband is. They have already killed her mother and children, and want to find her husband as his brother was going to betray them. But she doesn’t reveal where he is before she dies.
In modern time, we see a series of bizarre deaths, all tied to a particular crime family and caused by someone called The Chemist. The victims were turned to glass and shattered. A petty thief trying to reform, Harry Calhoun, witnesses one of these, and is being pursued by the mob. He will be our entry into Wild Inc. as they work to figure out who is behind this all in this tale of long sought revenge that even takes the group from New York to Sicily.
Unlike similar works, we don’t get a recitation of what Wild Inc. is and who its members are. We just get hints of them. And I was frankly annoyed by that. Had information been given out over the course of the novel, I would have preferred that over the cliche of one of the characters going over everything for the reader’s sake. I actually expected that Harry would be told this, thus letting the reader know, but we never got more than hints.
We see that Wild Inc. is a secretive organization that fights crime, and per the back cover, has been around for quite a while. The average person hasn’t heard of them, however, as Harry is ignorant of them. They are headquartered in the Empire State Building, and have a secret garage there with vehicles.
The head of the group is Morrigan Wild, so most likely this was a group formed by an ancestor. We know she is a skilled fighter and master of disguise, but not much else. Her group is comprised of Bulldog, a big Cockney man; Fergus, a black attorney; Genesis, a genius Indian woman with technical skills and degrees in a wide range of areas; Eagle Philip, a Native American man with lousy directional sense; and Chaplin, a red-headed Asian girl. They also have at least one informant in the mob itself. We learn at the end that they have a hospital of some kind in upstate New York where they send the main two villains. It’s not clear how much it’s like Doc’s “crime college.”
The volume also includes a preview to the next adventure, The Deadly Mister Punch. Hope we see this soon.
What I found interesting is that the whole cover design — front, back, and spine — is based on the Bantam Docs. The spine is black with white lettering, with the company’s logo done similar to the Bantam logo. The back cover also copies the layout, with Morrigan Wild’s head shown, with the rest of Wild Inc. behind it. The only thing missing is a listing of other Wild Inc. titles, like we got on the Docs. I know as a young Doc fan, reading those titles, which took me awhile to find, really excited me.
We also got a few nods to the pulps in the work itself. One character is named Norman Dent, and others were similarly named.
As noted, there were some problems. The work needs better proofreading. And I really would have liked more info on Wild and its members. What I noted above is about the extent of what we learn. Hopefully this will be addressed in the next novel. And having Harry escape, get recaptured, escape again, and get recaptured again was a bit much. Especially him wandering into a house that just happens to be a mob house. I would have also preferred a more world-threatening storyline, like I saw in the old Doc Savage novels (or even Dirk Pitt tales).
Another interesting new series to check out! Hopefully the author will address these issues.
