The Spider #7 - "Serpent of Destruction" by Grant Stockbridge (Norvell Page)

April 1934: Prohibition has been repealed in the United States, much to the dismay of organized crime and less-than-organized crime alike. But if liquor is now legal, narcotics are not, so it’s an easy transition for criminals to transfer their focus. Richard Wentworth, aka The Spider, knows this is a new level of war and he’s willing to risk everything to fight it.

A national crime syndicate has its sights set on the upper crust of society, feeding them cocaine and heroine and never looking back. The Bloody Serpent gang has the market mostly sewn up by the time the story begins. Wentworth is already making moves in the war, but it is apparent he’ll have to pull out all the stops this time. I’ve read several Spider books before but this one seems to have really cranked it up a notch. There is a ton of action here, with knife fights, gun battles, and fisticuffs galore. Wentworth’s disguise kit gets plenty of workouts as well, as he infiltrates and surveils the bad guys. But it’s a far-reaching syndicate with powerful tools of their own as proven when Police Commissioner Kirkpatrick is removed from duty because of his supposed taking of bribes. A set-up of course, but it’s an important tool that’s now off the table for The Spider. (Although Kirkpatrick makes up for this as a total bad ass in several gunfights on Wentworth’s behalf).

The stakes get even bigger when Wentworth’s fiancé, Nita van Sloan, is kidnapped and held as leverage against The Spider’s actions. Fortunately, his old pal, Professor Brownlee is available and tapped to construct a cane with a hidden nozzle that shoots spider venom. This cane is an awesome, perhaps even iconic weapon that The Spider uses to inflict 24 hours of tortuous pain before the victim ultimately dies. Pretty cool!

First published in 1934, this is the seventh entry in the series, and the fifth by the prolific writer Norvell Page who, I believe, had really begun to hit his stride. The plot is nicely complex without becoming obtuse and the action is virtually non-stop. The Spider has no interest in bringing bad guys to jail or in rehabilitating them. He’s happy to annihilate them and simply remove them from any chance of a further life of crime. The ending was pretty sweet with a nice twist in the identity of the main bad guy, the Chief of the Bloody Serpent gang.

Two bonus short stories are included with this volume: “Deadlock” by Arthur Leo Zagat and “The Death Yacht” by George A. Starbird. Bold Venture Press does a fine job with these reprints and I look forward to my next adventure with The Spider.