The Spider, Master of Men! #13: Builders of the Black Empire (Grant Stockbridge, Norvell W. Page) Review
Builders of the Black Empire is not amongst the best novels I've read of The Spider, though it is fun. (King of the Red Killers, The Spider and His Hobo Army, and The City Destroyer are more highly recommended by me.) There is a lot of great action and some very noteworthy whipping in Builders, but the villain plan is well below par, and the plotting is overly convoluted, even by hero pulp standards. It is a pretty good, though not great work from the frantic and unhinged #1 master of action, Norvell W. Page (here using the house pseudonym, Grant Stockbridge).
However, I must note one thing that is truly exceptional in this book (without ruining the moment). The sequence in which a wheelchair-bound Spider has a stand off against rioters outside of an eastern embassy contains the single most remarkable plan that I've ever read of a "good guy" outwitting an angry mob. If 6 billion writers were asked to devise a way for one man in a wheelchair to repel an angry mob by using a lighter, a flashlight, and a handgun, not one writer would contrive such as scheme as Norvell W. Page describes here on pages 63-65.
Bravo.
"Death to those who preach death!"