The Shadow # 241 – Vengeance Bay

So it’s been a little while since I reviewed one of The Shadow stories. One reason is that I haven’t been reading much of anything at all lately, and the other is that they’ve not been that great. I’ve been reading through the three hundred and twenty-six Shadow novels proper for over a year now, and this is, as the title states, number 241. Walter B. Gibson had been writing The Shadow stories for ten years at this point. The world is distinctly different: gone are the gangsters firing tommy-guns out of touring cars (and associated massive casualties), or smuggling, or racketeering. I haven’t even seen an evil mastermind for weeks and minions must be demanding. And, needless to say, it’s 1942 and there are “unsettled world conditions” making things complicated.

The sea change starts mostly in the 1941 story cycle, with noted globe-trotter Lamont Cranston grounded in New York, and thus having little better to do than hang out with his friend the Police Commissioner, or hang out on dates with his other friend, Margo Lane. (She showed up about a dozen books ago and is…an OK character. Actually she and Harry Vincent make an excellent team, but frustratingly they don’t work together that much.) And here’s the problem I have with that: the real Lamont Cranston, what we see of him, is actually a solid dude and doesn’t really deserve this treatment. I headcannon that he’s hanging out with Jim Corbett teaching jungle survival skills to army recruits in India during this time period. Gibson mostly has moved away from his earlier staples of writing from the point of view of a proxy hero (such as, sigh, Harry Vincent); and also has largely abandoned his focus on the villains.

Most of his earlier novels were written kind of in reverse, mapping out the villains’ path for victory rather than the hero’s as step one; and only then strategizing on the method of countering what would otherwise be an inevitable win for the bad guys. This also allowed Gibson to use a more, shall we say, colorful cast of characters (and then thin them out as the novel progresses.)

Another thing lost is the lack of genre shifts. Gibson used to regularly shift between gangster noir (now out of style along with the gangsters who inspired it), gaslamp fantasy, psychological thrillers, and plain murder mysteries. Now, it’s…I can’t define the genre other than to say it’s “Lord Peter Whimsy plus Batman.”–and there it stays without departure. I have nothing against Lord Peter Wimsy, but have come to regard B. W. as an ingrate imposter, so…

However, the real problem with the ’41-’42ish batch of stories is that The Shadow,  is: a) the primary point-of-view character, b) diluted. He’s much less formidable, much less powerful, much less insightful, and much, much less of an active instigator. He investigates less, shoots less, and misses more. The Shadow is no longer a personality, as in previous, early stories where the man involved seemed to be almost somehow crippled without cloak and hat, and unleashed with them; it’s a persona now, something that Lamont Cranston dresses up and does. (And the less said about Kent Allard is…very little actually said.)

Nevertheless, this book involves The Shadow commanding a cannon duel with a submarine, so it’s worth it entirely for that scene alone.

Okay, so: there’s this famous partisan refugee from Significantly Unnamed European Countries Which Have Been Overrun By Another Country, Vedo Bron. The Shadow is keeping an eye on him on the theory that he may need protecting, a theory which at first seems to not be borne out at all–and then is shown to be entirely true. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, the person whom the gutteral-voiced, stocky attackers end up with is Lamont Cranston (who was distracted lighting a cigarette with his back to a dark doorway, it could happen to anyone). Getting out of this scrape results in a rather thrilling sequence wherein crooks are astounded and dismayed to see The Shadow in one place, and hear his laugh coming from somewhere else entirely (meanwhile also, bullets. It’s understandable.)

Exactly why Vedo Bron has hired a crew of totally reformed and 100% trustworthy ex-smugglers to ship him down to Massaquoit Bay is yet unknown, but The Shadow promptly places himself and his agents Margo Lane and Harry Vincent on location to find out and help, thwart, or protect as needed. Harry Vincent doesn’t even get clobbered over the head once in this story. Unfortunately, The Shadow takes up the slack, getting heavily concussed not once but twice and almost needing outside help.

Almost.

Already on the ground (water?) in Massaquoit Bay are our new characters, Judy (who owns a speedboat and is generally wealthy), and her swain Jack (who is poor and also kind of a jerk.) Jack is searching for the famed buried treasure of Blackbeard, and thinks that he has a genuine lead on it. Into this ongoing drama enters Vedo Bron, Margo Lane, shifty professional treasure-hunters, fake lighthouse keepers, and a couple of stocky little men with gutteral foreign accents.–all watched over by the sharp and unerring eyes of…The Shadow!

And so it goes…

Having listed my complaints about the last batch of The Shadow novels, I’ll say that this one went down quick and smooth as any of the best of them. It has a minimal cast of agents, but it uses them effectively; the action scenes are mostly decent except for the climactic battle, which is epic, and, yeah, this one’s good.

Rated: Do you guys know how hard it is to actually clamber in and around stuff with a broad-brimmed hat on? It’s hard.