Return to Pal-ul-don -- Will Murray

Having enjoyed Will Murray's novels that continue the adventures of Doc Savage, I was pretty sure I couldn't go wrong with his new Tarzan adventure, Return to Pal-ul-don.  And I was right.  It's been a long time since I read Tarzan the Untamed and Tarzan the Terrible, and I didn't reread the former in preparation for this book, like James Reasoner did, but that turned out to be okay.  You don't really have to remember the earlier stories about Pal-ul-don to appreciate this one.  Besides, it's surprising how some of the old memories come back as soon as you read the words "Ho-don" and "Waz-don."

[Nostalgic aside: I read the Tarzan books in the old wartime G&D editions, passed on to me by my cousins Crider King and Billy King, without their dust jackets.  The paper in those editions was some of the most acidic ever produced, and now (yes, I still have them) the pages are so dark that it's hard to read the text.]

In Return to Pal-ul-don, set during WWII, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, is given the job of locating a missing British spy who has information vital to the cause. The spy is missing in Africa, and Clayton must locate the missing agent, code-named Ilex.  Piloting a P-40 Tomahawk, Clayton is knocked out of the air after a fight with several pteranodons and finds himself once more in the mysterious Pal-ul-don, where evolution hasn't operated as it has in the rest of the world.  Right away he gets into a fight with a croc, which naturally sold me on the book right there, and before long John Clayton becomes once again Tarzan the Terrible, as he must in order to survive.

Also stuck in the valley is a perfectly normal Tantor, the elephant, whose life Tarzan saves from the croc.  As a result of his encounter, Tantor is named Torn Ear and becomes an entertaining character in his own right.  Another being Tarzan encounters is the furry Mu-bu-tan, a human-like member of the tailed Waz-ho-don.  The villains are the spider people, who are out to capture and/or kill just about everybody. 

This is a capture/escape/pursuit novel, and James Reasoner mentions this pattern as being prominent in Tarzan the Untamed.  There's a bit too much of that here for my taste, but there's adventure aplenty, no question of that.

I've read a number of Tarzan pastiches, including books by Joe Lansdale (working from a Burroughs fragment), Philip Jose Farmer, and Fritz Leiber.  Of that group, Murray does the best job of capturing the Burroughs style, or so it seems to me after all these years.  There were many reminders of familiar phrases and characters.  You can be the judge of that for yourself if you read the book, and I certainly recommend it for fans of Tarzan.  You get non-stop action, interesting new twists on the inhabitants of Pal-ul-don, and a fully realized Tarzan the Terrible.  What's not to like?