I’ve been reading the Captain Hawklin adventures, a New Pulp hero written by Charles F. Millhouse, and have read the first three published novels. I enjoyed them very much, and obtained the next published work: Captain Hawklin and the Secrets of Monster Island.
Published in 2017, it is set in April 1930, earlier than any in the series so far. The series jumps around, but I am reading them in publication order.
So who is Captain Hawklin? He was a World War I fighter pilot, now is an inventor and adventurer, rich from his inventions. He lives and works in Crown City, located on the west coast of the United States. His headquarters is located in the main tower of the Hampton Bridge, which he designed and is being built in this novel. To me, he is more like the aviation pulp adventurers like Bill Barnes than Doc Savage.
He doesn’t have a large organization. He is assisted by Hardy Regan Miller and Oscar (Oz) Lyman. While it may seem they form a Ham/Monk dynamic, that’s not so. There is no bickering or the like. Hardy is tall and neat, has been with Hawklin since the war, and is a pilot and mechanic. Oz is short and stout, and a war veteran but now a pacifist, and used to work for Frank Buck. It’s actually in this novel that Oz joins Hawklin and Hardy, and we learned that Oz had met Hawklin and Hardy previously in Egypt and got involved with an adventure there.
Hawklin is overseeing the construction of the Silver Bridge over Hampton Bay when things go awray. Someone has attacked the men building it, telling Hawklin to “stay out of things.” Oz soon appears, having also been attacked, looking for help to find Frank Buck. For those not aware, Frank Buck (1884-1950) was a real person, well known in the early 20th century for finding exotic animals and bringing them back alive, usually for a zoo or a circuses, and wrote several books on his adventures and starred in a few films.
They soon discover the man behind it all: a wealthy philanthopist named Maximillian Odenthal, who had sent Buck on an expedition to a strange island in the South China Sea called Monster Island. Buck didn’t return. Odenthal wants to send another expedition, and Hawklin agrees to lead it. There is more to Max than it seems, with his hulking assistant Kong, his mysterious assassin, his daughter Savannah, and ties to the Kibo Brotherhood of pirates (which reminds me of the Singh Brotherhood that plagued The Phantom).
After a bit of difficulty, Hawklin and friends make it to the island, which we find is inhabited by dinosaurs, as well as a mysterious tribe. There is a secret of the island that Max is after, something called the “Time of the Gods,” which may be some kind of fountain of youth. Will Hawklin be able to figure it out and get him and his friends out of danger?
It’s yet another interesting adventure featuring Captain Hawklin. We get hints of his prior adventure that made him wealthy, but led to the death of others, and of Hawklin, Hardy, and Oz’s previous adventures together. I’m not sure if we will see this or other earlier adventures. Hawklin mets for the first time Zane Carrington, who appears in another novel. We also get some hints of the future adventures, one of which has been written.
My only complaint is the large number of typos that should have been fixed with some basic proofreading.
But this is a good series and am looking forward to reading further novels in the series.
