.epub download page: https://hub.hubzilla.de/cloud/ebooker/ebooks/The%20Gorge%20That%20Eats%20Men%20%28The%20Crane%20Fremont%20-%20Charles%20Stoddard.epub
Read free online: https://hub.hubzilla.de/cloud/ebooker/ebooks/CraneFremont_TheGorgeThatEatsMen.pdf
Another late-1930s Doc Savage knock-off. It ran under the Charles Stoddard house name (same one used for Thunder Jim Wade).
Crane Fremont is the tall, hard, mysterious trouble-shooter type who shows up with a fancy plane when the regular authorities can’t handle something, and his boys are the standard brawler-plus-knife-man combo
Story opens with an undercover Army Intelligence officer posing as an explorer whose plane goes down in the Peruvian jungle during a freak El Niño storm season.
What he finds is a hidden operation run by a massive, sweating, betel-chewing fat man named Dellara, complete with gas masks, armed thugs, and a girl who may or may not want to be rescued. There’s a stretch of jungle that has a nasty reputation for swallowing men whole, some kind of gas weapon, and a whole mess of natives getting worked over while the crooks try to keep their secret locked down.
Fremont’s plane shows up at the end of the first chapter, so you know the real trouble is just starting. It’s pure formula adventure pulp: jungle, gas, a grotesque villain, a pretty girl in the middle of it, and the hero’s crew coming in hard.
The usual 1930s “somebody’s building something nasty in the wilderness and our guy has to smash it” setup. Fast, violent, and exactly what you’d expect from another Doc clone of the period.
