‘Son of Ravage’

I had not previously been aware of J.P. Linde, but when I saw he wrote an authorized Peregrine novel, I wanted to see what else he has done.

One is Son of Ravage, which by the cover design is a clear Doc Savage pastiche — or at least giving us a son of Savage. But reading it, it seems the author was trying to balance being serious with being silly/satirical. At least he doesn’t put down the idea of Doc Savage, adventuring, or fighting crime. This may not be to everyone’s liking, but do check it out.

We start off in 1954. Our Doc pastiche is Rock Ravage, who is clearly no longer the superman he once was. All his aides have retired. We aren’t told their names, but we’re told they included a physicist, a mathematician, an anthropologist, an architect, and a CPA. He’s sold off his skyscraper headquarters and is heading west from New York via car or train, and being pursued by various criminal elements paid by his greatest enemy, Harrison Thunder. Is this the end of “The Ravager”?

We then move to 1989 and meet the 30-year-old Barry Stephen Levitt. He is unemployed, single, and broke, and usually drunk or high on marijuana. Hardly what we would expect of the “son of Ravage.” He does have a group of friends, including Face, an out-of-work actor; Doc, a portly chemist; Brains, an intellectual; and Beast, a beastly man-child. They come to get him out of his mother’s basement.

There are strange goings-on. At an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, a woman hopes to tell others of the “miracle cure” she found. Before that can happen, a strange man known as Tanktop arrives. He’s called this because he has a miniature tank turret he wears like a hat, and he uses it to destroy the AA meeting — including the woman — and to retrieve this “miracle cure.” He gets away by being picked up by a helicopter. Literally.

Barry’s friends decide to investigate this, dragging Barry along. They figure out the only place the helicopter that picked up Tanktop could have come from: an aviation museum in Oregon. So they head there. There they run into someone else investigating things: Tilly Peterson, the daughter of that murdered woman, and the source for the “miracle cure” her mother found — a strange chemical that seems to be some kind of rocket fuel that drug dealers are adding to drugs.

They all come together after being attacked by a mysterious group that leads to them escaping from the museum in a spectacular, if not destructive, manner, run into a sort of “children of the corn” group, and get to a coastal hotel, only for Tilly to be grabbed.

The group heads to San Francisco. Tilly is about to escape, only to join up with a new cult formed by a former science-fiction author who lives on a yacht. With them, they are heading to Panama. Looking for Tilly, Barry and his friends hitch a ride with a man driving his wife’s pink Cadillac. It turns out the man is the architect who was part of the Ravagers group, and he knows who Barry is. He takes them to a special ship left behind by the Ravager, where Barry can learn about his father and his work. They then head to Panama, as this seems to be the center of things.

In Panama, we encounter a T. rex guarding an island, a neo-Nazi group, a Panamanian general, a world-threatening plot by Harrison Thunder, a hidden valley of gold, and more. Can Barry and his friends, along with Tilly, put an end to it all?

At the end, we get an epilogue set 25 years later. The group of adventurers is coming to the end of its crime-fighting career. Barry is married, though childless, and is physically unable to adventure. While the group has been joined by new members, and we meet two of them, Beast has passed away. So this seems to be the end of it all. But the group tells Barry, maybe not. They found Tilly. And she has a daughter. And it should be his.

This novel came out in 2019, and I have no idea if the author plans any further works. He could certainly show us the “granddaughter of Ravage” if he wanted, or adventures from either Rock Ravage’s or Barry’s heyday. But I have no idea if he wants to.

Overall, this was a decent story, but there were some big plot holes that just didn’t make sense. The satire didn’t really work for me, though it wasn’t a turnoff either. I do recommend checking it out if you’re interested in a different take on a Doc pastiche.