The Golden Man

By: Kenneth Robeson

Narrated by: Marc Vietor

Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

A golden man rises miraculously from the sea with the power to peer into the future and challenge the Man of Bronze. Doc Savage and his crew follow the mystery man's fabulous trail from South America to New York where they uncover his dark sanctuary - and come face-to-face with an evil cult of blackmail and murder.

©1935, 1941; 1962, 1968 Street & Smith Publications, Inc.; Condé Nast Publications, Inc. (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

Nice Performance of Another Classic Doc Savage

Marc Vietor does a nice job with this one. The story is not one of my personal favorites in the Doc Savage series, but it is still fun. Doc and his men uncover a secret cult! How much more pulpy can you get? I do wish Audible would do more of these with a multi voiced cast. Still, I am thrilled to see these productions of these classic adventures. My fingers are crossed there are more recordings from this series and Walter Gibson's The Shadow as well.

Man of Bronze vs. Man Of Gold

This is an interesting pulp selection from circa 1941 or so. A mysterious "golden Man" is found in the sea and knows things that he should not be able to know. Apparently seeing the future, Soon Monk and Ham at locked up in a South American prison and the mystery man disappears. Eventually Doc gets involved to solve the mystery.

This is an interesting book in that this is one of the feew times that I can recall that Doc is thrown for a loop when the mystery man starts telling him things that Doc felt were known to no one. As a result he is a lot less sure of his plan. An interesting change of pace for the normally stoic man who always has a plan.

Good narration.
Decent story - although not one of the more far fetched high adventure types, despite the premise. Mostly Doc and company versus gangsters and a couple impossible happenings.

Recommended if you like the pulps.
Here is hoping that they put out more soon.

Late 1941 Savage!

Doc was heading into his abbreviated tales by 1941. With the page count reduction Lester Dent had to shorten his stories, and the abrupt endings often exposed this fact. That is not really the case for The Golden Man. It’s a bit of an abrupt wrap up, but it works. This is a Doc Savage classic that has all the pulpy elements that fans expect. Marc Vietor I thank you for voicing these words from cheap paper stock so well. I think you are great!

Golden man

Loved the story and performance. Enjoyed the book and Audible. Remember the story when I read it in the late 70's and early 80's.

Excellent story of the Golden Man!

The story and narration was extremely entertaining. Loved the classic book and performance- I wish audible had the complete collection of doc Savage.

An odd one

Possible spoilers below, though I've tried to be nonspecific.

Doc Savage stories are highly variable, and this isn't the best. A couple of mysteries -- the golden man of the title, a murder -- turn out to have mundane, if highly contrived, explanations. Otherwise things drag on and on until it's time to wrap things up: lots of tedious to-ing and fro-ing, the Savage crew getting thrown in jail, or having endless, inconclusive fights,

There are a number of odd things about it. First, there's a strange emphasis on male nudity -- the golden man comes naked from the sea, Monk and Ham are stripped naked and left that way in a cell (I think for months, but it wasn't very clear). It reminds you of how hard male writers work to get their female characters naked, but even on those terms it's a stretch. Second, the book always uses circumlocutions for what it calls "European powers," where plainly it's talking about Germany. At a certain point that may have been standard practice. But third, the plot hinges on foiling an attempt to get Germany in trouble by counterfeiting a Nazi attack on American shipping. One wonders where the writer's sympathies lay.

Which isn't to say that Doc Savage stories in general are like this. "Kenneth Robeson" was a pseudonym used by a number of writers at the publishing house, so you don't always know what you'll get. "Fortress of Solitude," for example, is a lot better, though all of these stories have their limitations. Given the schedules on which pulp writers had to produce, it's remarkable that some of these stories are as good as they are. Norvell Page's Spider stories, for example, were quite ambitious when he had his heart in them, for example "The Spider versus the Empire State."

A Captivating Mystery!

I wasn't sure if I was going to like this one, because the premise didn't make it sound very exciting. However, this book hooks you right from the start, and it leads you to a captivating mystery in which a man seemingly witnesses his own suicide, and Doc and his friends have to solve the riddle of a death by impossibility. It's so good!