STARTLING TOMES

BELLEVUE . Robin Cook. Putnam's; 2024. Mitt Fuller starts his surgical residency at the famous -- or infamous -- Bellevue Hospital in New York. He is especially intrigued by the place because several of his ancestors were doctors there, some of whom were quite celebrated. Bellevue is now a full-service hospital center, practically a city into itself, but each day Mitt passes the abandoned original psychiatric institution that has stood there empty for years but, oddly. never been turned into anything else. During the first few days of his residency, he sees strange things -- forceps that seem to jump out of someone's hands -- and is astonished that his patients, who seem fine at first, start dying, even though it's very much against the odds. Then he sees the bizarre apparition of a little girl with a strange instrument poking out of her eye ... Is Mitt going crazy, or is Bellevue haunted by the dead patients of the past, and could it be true that his medical ancestors were...

THE INVISIBLE MAN . H. G. Wells. First published in 1897. Although written over a hundred years ago,   The Invisible Man   is written in a very accessible style and fast pace. The inn he stumbles into at the opening is not the Lion's Head as in the film, but the Coach and Horses. There is some humor in the book, but certainly not as much as in   Whale's film version. There is no love interest to speak of, and the protagonist, Frank Griffin, winds up in the home of Professor Kemp, whom he knows, by accident. In the film Griffin is driven crazy by an ingredient in the invisibility formula, but in the novel he's pretty much a self-absorbed sociopath from the beginning. He doesn't derail any trains -- although he does plan to embark upon a "reign of terror" -- but he does murder one man and attack many others. This is certainly not   Wells's   best novel, but it is fascinating, highly influential, and a good read to boot.

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS . H. G. Wells. " In another moment the huge wave, well-nigh at the boiling point had washed upon me. I screamed aloud, and scalded, half blinded, agonised   [sic] , I staggered through the leaping, hissing water towards the shore. Had my foot stumbled, it would have been the end. I fell helplessly, in full sight of the Martians, upon the broad, bare gravelly spit that runs down to mark the angle of the Wey and Thames. I expected nothing but death."  " Surely if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity -- pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion. " H. G. Wells' 1898 novel   The War of the Worlds , besides bringing into being the whole genre of invasion from outer space and alien life forms, is a brilliant novel written in a style that is still quite vivid and accessible today despite its being a work of the 19th century. Wells' distinctive and descriptive prose brings to shuddery life a true horror and scien...

IRON MAN: FEMME FATALES . Robert Greenberger. Del Rey; 2009. In this paperback novel brought out in the wake of the   Iron Man   movie with Robert Downey, Tony Stark -- the inventive genius who is also the super-hero Iron Man -- has his hands full with attacks by both the forces of Hydra ["cut off one limb and a dozen take its place"] and the mafia-like European Maggia. Both groups are being led by sexy woman who coincidentally have scarred faces: Madame Hydra [formerly the Viper] and Madame Masque [formerly Whitney Frost, the daughter of Count Nefaria, who heads the Maggia]. Masque comes to work for Stark in disguise, and Madame Hydra intrigues him and beds him in the guise of a mysterious green-haired woman named Katalin [that should have been his first clue]. This is a moderately entertaining book using concepts and characters created way back in the "silver age" of comics in the sixties. The hoped-for meeting/battle between the two different if similar women nev...

TARZAN OF THE APES . Edgar Rice Burroughs. First published in   All-Story   in 1912, then in book form in 1914. This is Edgar Rice Burroughs' original novel about the famous Tarzan of the Apes. After a mutiny on the ship they are voyaging on, Lord and Lady Greystoke are forced ashore in Africa, where they build a cabin. The couple die, and the infant Greystoke is left alone, whereupon he is taken by the ape Kala, whose own baby has just died. Tarzan educates himself by reading the books left behind in the cabin, and grows up believing that Kala is his natural mother. Using his human intelligence, he is able to survive conflicts with the other gorillas (a fictional breed) but ultimately leaves the group after Kala is killed. Professor Porter, his daughter Jane, her black maid, Esmeralda, Tarzan's cousin William Clayton (the true heir), and others are also forced ashore (conveniently near the cabin) where Tarzan rescues them time and again from danger. Jane and Tarzan virtually ...

DOC SAVAGE: SKULL ISLAND . Will Murray. Altus Press; 2013. In a brand-new Doc Savage adventure,   King Kong   has already attacked New York and fallen from the Empire State building when the novel begins. The 1930's pulp magazine hero tells his comrades about how he met Kong some years before in 1920, when he accompanied his stern father on a search of the Indian Ocean for Doc's grandfather, sailor Stormalong Savage. Grandpappy has been marooned on Skull Mountain Island and been the pet of the big ape-like creature for many years. In addition to staying out of the way of Kong and dodging all manner of hungry dinosaurs, Doc and his family members have to deal with murderous attacks by a band of head-hunting dyaks with poisonous blowguns.   Skull Island   has some exciting and intriguing moments, but it's not as memorable as the classic Doc-Savage-meets-Dinosaurs novel   The Land of Terror . The attempts to sort of humanize a completely unreal character, Doc, are ...