The Shadow #116 – Intimidation, Inc.

For anyone else, this would be a mid-tier gangster story. The Continental Op  could comfortably swagger up and start either throwing hands or throwing insults at any point in time and fit right in. But, since this is Walter B. Gibson (nee Maxwell Grant…or maybe vice versa), what results is quite a superior little novella that includes disguises, gun battles, corrupt politicians, disgruntled inventors, martial law, capeswishing, and ends with the requisite distant, triumphant, sinister laugh.

So The Shadow dealt with quite a wide range of crime and criminals, from common murderers and bankrobbers, to  racketeers, jewelry thieves and organized gangsters; he also investigated and resolved quite a lot of white-collar crime, too. As you can imagine, the intersection between these genres also provided a lot of fun, too. This isn’t even the only “crime has its own HR department” story in The Shadow’s oeuvre: there’s Wizard of Crime (the 1943 one, there are actually two novels with this title, one of which can’t be found for love or money); Crime, Insured; Chain of Death; and probably others I haven’t gotten to, yet, or have forgotten. Of course, we are disregarding in this count any organization which does not include standard business attire for its meetings. 

Anyhow.

We start a bang. Actually several bangs, as disgraced business magnate Ludwig Meldon attempts to relate his exculpatory story to a notary public. Meldon has been financially ruined by a disastrous business trade, with another company, purchasing solid stock at way below the market value, wins hugely. Except that the supposed benefactor of this scenario also soon undertakes an insane loss, transferring the funds still further, into the eventual control of the cunning criminal we–and The Shadow–soon come to know as Intimidation, Incorporated.

The Shadow arrives too late to prevent the murder, but soon enough to study the evidence that the cover-up crew (who helpfully identify themselves as minions of local mob boss Sack Balban) shortly after manage to disguise with a firebomb. So it’s off to round two, as globe-trotting multimillionaire and investor of random large cash payouts to worthy causes, Lamont Cranston, saunters into town. The Shadow isn’t able to prevent the previous payout from reaching Intimidation, Incorporated, but he is able to study the criminal’s methods in real time. Cranston is privy to the scene when the four men who hold the key to the wealth of the city of Dorchester receive a threat from Intimidation, Incorporated. DA-elect and….rather spineless lawyer Elwood Clewis, radio announcer Ray Bursard, manufacturer Newell Radbourne, and “bewhiskered” Mayor Jonathan Wrightley all fold like wet rags when instructed to accept an inflated bid for an important contract. Intimidation, Incorporated is thorough in his work, carefully threatening all parties involved–the high bidder, who was instructed how much to bid for and will be forced to pay over the excess funds; the low bidder, who was (wait for it) intimidated into dropping out of the race; and the city bigwigs, who are threatened with death by bomb if they don’t accept and pay out city funds to the contractor with the higher bid–and promptly announce the fact publically.

With people like this in charge of the city, you kind of realize how come it’s in the state it is, and why Intimidation, Incorporated has been so successful.

SHAKILY, the committee men arose. Bursard was the first to reach the door. He tried the knob, looked startled when he found that it still failed to turn.
The Shadow, strolling up as a spectator, took hold of the knob and gave it a firm twist.
“It wasn’t locked at all!” ejaculated Radbourne, who saw the action. “The inside knob was merely tightened, so that it would stick.”
“It fooled me,” expressed Clewiss, angrily; then he added to Bursard: “But you fell for it, too.”
“I did,” gritted Bursard, “but I’ll be a fool no longer!”
Striding across the room, Bursard grabbed up the microphone that stood on the corner table. The other committee members gaped when they saw a loose cord follow the instrument.
The microphone was not attached to any circuit!
Clewiss, not to be outdone, made a dive for the rug beneath the table. He yanked it away. Instead of a bomb-filled hole, the viewers saw solid floor. Like the door and the microphone, the bomb threat was a bluff!
Four angry men went into a huddle.

The calm Mr. Cranston is also there when they decide that a) even if the threat wasn’t real, b) the embarrassment would be if we admitted it, so, c) let’s all keep our mouths shut about this. Again the obvious suspect is Sack Balban.

The Shadow therefore pays a visit that evening to Sack Balban–in the disguise of famed gunman and racketeer Link Delvo. Since Sack runs his joint with a veneer of respectability, he has quite the fancy office, with a solid door dividing him from the boys in the back room. Link Delvo is jawing with second-fiddle Nobby (heh) Kilgan until the boss finishes meeting with a front-door visitor–one of the four big-shots of Dorchester–the one who shifted the blame on the Intimidation, Incorporated business to Sack Balban, and is currently demanding a 50-50 split of the racketeers’ gains in the city, and therefore the one who is actually behind it all. Unfortunately, by the time Sack susses this out, he’s been cleverly murdered by Intimidation, Incorporated, who escapes without any of the others knowing his name or identity.

Or….

Does The Shadow know?

Either way, as Intimidation, Incorporated maneuvers to steal $200,000 from Newell Radbourne via threatening both the elderly but stalwart Judge Noy and the plaintiff’s as-previously-mentioned spineless lawyer Elwood Clewiss, The Shadow adroitly steps in and freaking steals the money right back. The rest of the book is a cat-and-mouse game as The Shadow sets up, step by step, to trap the audacious and greedy criminal red-handed. Oh, and to also expose all petty crime, graft, and racketeering in the town as well and get that scum off the streets, too. And it’s kind of delightful as the author gleefully points out how Intimidation, Incorporated, must be fuming to have his own tactics used against him, while highlighting the entirely deadpan style in which The Shadow proceeds to issue (and ignore) typewritten threats.

WHEN he reached the hotel room, The Shadow opened his portable typewriter and wrote himself a note, addressed in simple, direct style to Lamont Cranston.
The note specified that he should take the plane that left Dorchester at noon, without the two hundred thousand dollars that he had received from Newell Radbourne.
The instructions added that he was to leave the money in a suitcase in the hotel room, with his other luggage; therefore, he was not to check out of the Dorchester House. He was to leave the door  unlocked, so that whoever wished could enter.
The letter threatened death if instructions were not followed. It added that the recipient was to destroy the note. When he had finished the letter, The Shadow signed it in capitals with the name “INTIMIDATION INCORPORATED.”
The Shadow then proceeded to disobey his own instructions.

Awesome, heh.

Today’s tropes and general feeling towards rich bankers, financiers, or factory owners being what they are, I feel the need to point out the interesting fact that quite often The Shadow is protecting wealthy businessmen–generally from other wealthy businessmen, but sometimes from thuggish lowlifes, overeager shareholders, or overeager relatives who are shareholders–without any of today’s nice ideas about redistributionism. Legitimately acquired wealth–up to and including the ornate jewels owned by vacuous dowagers and ditzy socialites–is seen as the legitimate property of its owners, who deserve to keep and quietly enjoy it. (Or display it conspicuously whilst walking down dark alleys, but hey. Free country.) A quaint notion that absolutely would not survive in the current day, where property is for me but not for thee.

Of course, another quaint notion is the noblesse oblige shown by good-coded characters. Honorable business magnates pay their servants well and contribute to charities; they deal honestly and honorably with each other; they avoid underhanded tactics. Newell Radbourne was taken to court by a disgruntled inventor, but having seen proof of the man’s case, he’s willing to settle for a more reasonable sum–entirely voluntarily. Especially notable is the globe-trotting multimillionaire Lamont Cranston, who quietly funds many a philanthropic endeavor, such as personally paying for retired crooks to go to an exclusive Caribbean island…

So is bravery, responsibility, and trust in civic institutions, even while examining how weak men can create (wait for it) bad times. Judge Noy, although shaken by a death threat, steels himself and is prepared to render an entirely fair judgement for the inventor–if only Elwood Clewiss hadn’t absolutely thrown the case. Judge Noy is also instrumental in authorizing the city-wide cleanup that destroys the low-level rackets and petty crime that plagued Dorchester.

This book (#116) falls in the middle of what I originally registered as a decided slump, a joltingly poor run in an until-then triumphant five years’ worth of increasingly good pulp novels. I’m slowly revisiting most of these books and finding them to be pretty damn good (although Washington Crime is just straight-up embarrassing.) This is the point where The Shadow shifted from a terrifying, faceless agent of merciless justice, to a more human, humane, conventionally-understandable superhero. The Shadow is more directly identified as “wealthy globe-trotter Lamont Cranston” and spends more time with his face on-screen and less often seen through the eyes of awed or just plain clueless (i.e., Harry Vincent) agents or proxy heroes. As time wore on, he became ever more humanized and less powerful; here, though, he’s still impassive, keen-eyed and inscrutable, evading mooks with ease, vanishing from death traps with nothing more than a trailing whispered laugh, and materializing out of the darkness to thwart maddened murderers like the specter of Vengeance itself. And highly entertaining it is to read, too.

Rated: Yours very truly,
Skaith, Incorporated

The Shadow # 105 – The Yellow Door

TLDR: it’s Harry Vincent’s finest hour.

Since the 1942-batch of novels was heavy going, I zigged back to this one. It was published in 1936 and showcases The Shadow and his agents at the top of their game. Cliff Marsland, Rutledge Mann, Hawkeye, and Jericho Druke get some pagetime. Even Burbank gets a chance to get some fresh air, taking up a field operations post in New Jersey and running mission control for Vic Marquette and the G-men.

So I’ve reported at length about the taut pacing and easy to follow, fast-moving plots Walter B. Gibson had pretty much perfected. I’ve also mentioned that his characterization skills benefited, rather than suffered, from brevity. With less leeway for self-indulgence, only the most relevant, vivid, and memorable traits of each character are showcased, and these are shown only in service of moving the plot forward. So Hawkeye is the best trailer and spotter in the business: he finds his man and trails him without anybody any the wiser, uncovering vital clues. Cliff Marsland is a gunman who walks his own trail in the badlands, and is cool as a cat while the bullets are flying. Burbank is a technological wizard with nerves of absolute tungsten and an unflappably methodical manner. Unlike some other pulp novels (by which I mean: Doc Savage), The Shadow isn’t a huge gadgeteer even though he does stay on the cutting edge of aeronautic developments. The most complicated device he or his agents carry normally is a flashlight. This is one of the exceptions, as Harry Vincent is sent off undercover equipped with a miniature radio transmitter which The Shadow and Burbank use their own send/receiving stations to triangulate in on and discover the secret Citadel of the hidden Yellow Door. It’s smart, but feels entirely grounded.

Oh yeah, and then there’s Harry Vincent (sigh). Actually, though, as remarked above, Harry Vincent actually lives up to his moniker as The Shadow’s “most competent agent” in this book, hardly at all making a misstep until the 94% marker, and that barely through any fault of his own, and then also taking on his direct antagonist, and contributing to the big shot villain’s demise by lead injection. Not bad for our boy who usually is the resident punching bag. (There is also another Shadow story wherein Harry Vincent makes a triumphal exit from an underground lair shirtless, waving a gun, with a disheveled damsel clinging to him…but he’s done like 2% of the work in that particular instance, and also I just can’t take that mental image seriously. I mean, it’s Harry Vincent. Come on.) Still! He does good in this book. Let us not forget this.

Okay, so. The other part of why earlier plots feel more grounded and competent is because…they are. Instead of having a so-called detective who be led by the nose from obvious clue to obvious clue (looking at you, Bruce), The Shadow actually investigates. He tails suspects, confirms theories, and, well, he would have interrogated the suspects, too, if they hadn’t ended up eating a bullet in the ensuing gunfight. Ah well. What’s more, since this case is fairly simple and because The Shadow has almost an inside man on the job, the complicating twists are almost entirely supplied by forces which The Shadow cannot reasonably predict: Police Commissioner Weston and his attempts at detectiving.

Our game begins to foot with the entrance of James Dynoth, who has just murdered the wealthy businessman Peter Gildare and returned to his home preparatory to fleeing to the safety of the Citadel. He is given twenty minutes to pack and depart. About fifteen minutes in, he turns around to find an ominous black-clad figure standing behind him. The Shadow was too late to save the dying man, but not too late to hear his dying words. Among these words were “The Yellow Door.” We are about to find out exactly what this means when twenty past eight hits and a) Dynoth’s nerve gives out and he crunches his suicide capsule, b) a machine gun opens up on the house, c) the house explodes. The Shadow escapes with some injury, but does have a lead to follow up on: a man named Ferris Krode, who works in Cleveland and knows about The Yellow Door.

Meanwhile, millionaire businessman Dudley Birklam is confiding in Vic Marquette. Birklam has been approached by a man named Ferris Krode and warned that certain courses of action will lead to trouble for him and his business. He fears that Krode is involved with the prior deaths, of which Gildare’s was typical. Marquette promises government protection to big business, because of course he does.

The Shadow has carried this deduction still further, and has a man on the spot. And it’s Harry Vincent. Now, normally this would result in Harry getting slugged over the head, kidnapped, or shot at, but in this case Harry actually manages not only to bluff Krode into thinking that he’s there for the 11:00 meeting with “Mandon,” he also turns around and manages to convince the real Mandon that he’s Krode, uncovering valuable information the entire time.

The Yellow Door is a secret society of blackmailers, saboteurs, and industrial spies, running a multi-industry racket.  It’s also an actual door, in a place called the Citadel, where the big shot is. Krode is the highest ranking man that The Shadow or Harry Vincent are able to discover, but he isn’t the big shot. And if he isn’t, who is…? The Shadow intends to find out, although he is substantially hindered at critical points by the not-so-cunning plans of Commissioner Weston. Like, seriously, Commissioner, stick to the budget and presiding over official breakfasts.

Another great thing is that having a proactive hero makes it easier to showcase that hero’s competence, as well. The Shadow already has a plan in place for the final battle–position the G-Men and have them rush in guns blazing once he, Burbank, and Harry Vincent have collaborated to locate the Citadel–but when he gets the information that the perimeter fence is electrified and the surrounding hillside is mind, The Shadow instantly adjusts his plans and orders his forces accordingly.

Overall, this story seems as though the author enjoyed writing it. There’s an eagerness to the descriptions and plot, and a relish to the action–and even a few witty flourishes, such as his description of Guzzler’s Joint:

The proprietor was leaning on the bar, his fat arms folded, surveying the customers with a pleasant grin. To Guzzler, the middle line of the room was like the bars of a cage; on one side, the monkeys – on the other, visitors to the zoo. In comparing the boastful thugs and the society habitues, Guzzler had never yet decided which were the apes and which the humans. Guzzler was philosophical as well as imaginative.

Rated: I liked this book and reading it made me happy.

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.

The Shadow #229 – Gems of Jeopardy

So, as the well-informed know, there are around three hundred and eighty-odd Shadow stories, written over a period of eighteen years. The vast majority were written by The Shadow’s original creator, Walter B. Gibson, under the penname Maxwell Grant, but there were several other authors who were pinch-hitters as well. Lester Dent (the Doc Savage guy) wrote a handful, and some hack named Bruce Elliott wrote the last twentyish novels after Gibson was fired. I haven’t reached those yet, but I’m assured they’re dreadful. Anyhow, after Gibson, the best of The Shadow’s authors was Theodore Tinsley, a pulp novelist.

I use the term deliberately. Gibson wrote his stories with ceaseless crossings between genres–sometimes straight-up mystery, sometimes proto-superheroic, sometimes gothic melodrama, sometimes hardboiled gangster noir–to the point where The Shadow is almost its own genre in itself. Tinsley, on the other hand, wrote pulp fiction and was proud of it. Although he approximates Gibson’s handling of the characters remarkably well, Tinsley is cruder than Gibson–in plot, in execution…and in taste. Stay tuned, we’ll get there when we get there.

A little more discussion before we get into the plot. The Shadow had been around over ten years (and two hundred twenty-eight previous volumes) at this point, and had run a huge gamut of foes, from corrupt board members to evil aviators, corrupt politicians in distant cities, backwoods intrigues, underwater mad scientists, desert mad scientists, swamp mad scientists, isolated ancestral castle mad scientists, evil psychologists, more evil-overlord-wannabes complete with secret societies than you can shake a stick at, several would-be world emperors, and…thugs trying to hijack armored cars. The audience has seen quite a lot, to the point where it would be difficult to top–and futile to try. It’s hard to take the narrator’s breathless assertion that this car chase through Manhattan, or this jewel robbery, or this attempt to hostilely take over a company is the most daring, dangerous, and brilliant of The Shadow’s career when…it’s really not, come on. We’ve seen him take on Doctor Moquino, Zemba, and Zanigew…some dude wearing a mask of his own face really kind of doesn’t compare.

But, if that sounds like “The Shadow is now boring,” please continue reading, because that is definitely not the case. Gibson and his editorial cohort seemed to recognize this, and, I think deliberately, made them simple again. Throughout the later part of 1941 (or at least, the last handful of books I’ve read, which I’m plugging through in numerical order), the high-concept dramatics have been backed down a notch in favor of simpler, lower-key–but no less interesting, and no less intense–stakes. 

Okay, so that being said, what’s the plot?

Well, first there are a couple of murders, a burned-down house, and a map which has had the Atlantic coastline ripped away. That’s for starters. Then there’s Jerome Linton, a business acquaintance of Lamont Cranston’s, whom he and Margo Lane witness dumping an already-dead body to fake a hit-and-run accident…

Twelve boxes of jewels have been smuggled into America by the brutal, treacherous ex-Balkan Colonel and his beautiful, but absolutely no less brutal and treacherous wife, Princess Zena. They have no sooner disposed of anyone else who could identify them, when they are confronted by the sinister Mr. X, who, somehow forewarned of their (money’s) arrival, has laid an ambush. Zena sacrifices her husband and escapes, but with a burning hatred of Mr. X and a no less burning desire to get her jewels back. So she murders a woman and steals her clothes and car and drives off…

Meanwhile, The Shadow is looking into Jerome Linton and the links between him and the previous murders. He’s aided (surprisingly competently) by a roster of his agents: Harry Vincent, Hawkeye, Moe Shrevnitz, Clyde Burke, and Margo Lane. And when I say “surprisingly competently,” I mean Harry Vincent doesn’t even get captured and tortured through any fault of his own! I mean, yes, that is him on the cover, sure, but it wasn’t actually his fault! Margo Lane and Moe Shrevnitz make an actual competent team in following their suspects! They do need rescuing, uh, twice…but they’re under cover and shooting back gamely when The Shadow arrives! Clyde Burke…actually doesn’t do anything himself, but he supposedly lends his face for The Shadow to press an interrogation. (I have a dubious here, because Clyde has been described as small and wiry; The Shadow, master of disguise that he is, is very tall. And it isn’t a phone interview. Anyhow.) Soon enough, a $50,000.00 satchel of jewels and a notorious fence make their appearance.

And so it goes.

So, yes, Margo Lane has finally turned up in-novels, and her presence is not a negative. Mostly because having an actual damsel on the team makes Harry Vincent automatically 83% less likely to end up in the “distressed damsel” role of the novel. But, barring a few false starts, she’s shaping up to be a competent agent in her own right, cool under pressure, good with a gun, and surprisingly resourceful.

The other standout character from this novel is its principal antagonist, Princess Zena. She’s a brunette with shapely (we are often reminded) legs….on one of which, tucked into her garter in a flat leather sheath, is a razor-sharp knife that she has great expertise and zero hesitation in using. She’s managed to survive the war-torn disruption of her native (carefully unnamed) country; she’s survived the exile from it (by shoving her husband into an assassin’s bullet and then faking her own death in quicksand); and she’s utterly determined to find revenge and her twelve boxes of stolen crown jewels. She’s utterly ruthless, but she’s also intelligent, charismatic, and enormously proactive throughout the story….by which I mean she has a body count almost as high as Mr. X’s by the time they finally meet, and there’s an actual villain-versus-villain duel which is kind of just awesome.

And that’s about all I have to say, because that really should be enough. This book is kind of just awesome: it’s correctly paced, and the stakes are just high enough; it’s well-characterized, with almost all The Shadow’s agents getting a chance to shine (or bleed) (….sigh); the action scenes, while definitely gorier than the norm, could still pass muster by the Hayes’ Code and are fast and satisfying. There’s a number of good villains, an underground lair (this one includes bonus waterfall), and The Shadow scaring the crap out of some henchmen when, in that hidden and secure base, eerie laughter begins to echo…

Rated: I forgot to to mention, while in that lair he uses their phone to call Burbank, too. Awesome.

Kodak vs Niji

kodak photo, 1930s, man in slouch hat and flowing cloak, face hidden in shadow, deep shadows

man in slouch hat and flowing cloak, face hidden in shadow, deep shadows –niji

The Shadow # 35 – The Black Hush

So this one was published in August of 1933, written by Walter B. Gibson alias Maxwell Grant, cover art by George Rozen.

This is just a really superior Shadow story. It’s just really good and perfectly pleasing, and it made me feel happy.

It’s kind of hard to say more than that, so instead, I’ll talk about how Maxwell Grant (nee Walter B. Gibson) made his hero effective by focusing on the villains.

Think about standard plot structure: the hero wins, the villain loses. Most authors begin with this premise and work outwards from there. They craft from the top down to create situations where the villains lose. This is why the Death Star had a conveniently-placed ventilation shaft, why the hive swarm goes immobile instead of berserk when the queen is deactivated, why Sauron poured so much of his own being and power into the One Ring that destroying it destroys him utterly. At the more tactical level, it’s why the gangsters playing poker in the front room keep their backs strategically to the window, or a sentry decides not to investigate the rustling and muffled cursing noises from that bramble patch–but does go chase a pebble down the dark hallway. Most authors position their villains for failure. Then they allow the hero to win (sometimes after a stiff struggle getting through the trench run, sure, but still.)

However, Gibson reversed this. He planned how his villains should win, and then engineered a way to prevent them. For instance: mobsters under command of a ruthless mob leader and supported with a dark ray that will suppress alarms and opposition (so no witnesses, no police, no watchmen), and equipped with explosives, guns, and getaway cars are at one point preparing to take on the New City Bank. They’re a tough, picked crew and they know their stuff. Fifteen minutes are all they need. What can The Shadow possibly do to stop them? Well, he could get there first, so they don’t ever even get their fifteen minutes, and then he could have backup arrive to provide cross-fire.

So, he’d need to know where they’re going and when. He needs to have access to Goldy Tancred’s inner circle, and Goldy isn’t accepting visitors. So: Clyde Burke and Burbank bug Goldy’s apartment, and, this not even being enough once Goldy develops an entirely new, healthy respect for operational security measures, The Shadow drops in and goes through the waste-paper basket. So Harry Vincent befriends the unlucky young engineer-inventor who seems to have gotten mixed up in this whole mess and tries to find out what he knows about the Black Hush. So The Shadow knows the target, the time, and their general plan. So, when the (remaining) gangsters flee to their countryside lair to lick their wounds and plot subsequent days’ revenge, The Shadow knows where they are and also (sigh) that Harry Vincent needs rescuing.

Villains are never stupid, although the monomaniacal supervillain-types do tend to be somewhat dense, admittedly. As a whole, they are adaptive, clever, and increasingly well-prepared for the physical threat that The Shadow represents (multiple cars with machine guns, and plenty of hand grenades: standard anti-Shadow ordnance.) Goldy Tancred, for instance, discovers the wiretap almost immediately and begins using it for counter-surveillance, flushing out Clyde Burke as a spy, and from then on putting all orders in writing and then burning the notes.

Pity he didn’t try re-sweeping the whole apartment for bugs after nullifying the first one….

Gibson’s Shadow stories have an enduring fascination, because, instead of making the villains weaker than the hero, he made the hero stronger than them. He lets the struggle play out on a level just slightly higher, and slightly better thought out, than the zero ground most heroes (i.e., BATMAN) operate at.

All that being said, what’s this one about, and is it just another pulp action story, told at breakneck speed so the incongruities of plot don’t register until later?

So we start off in a swanky hotel, where two groups are gathered. One is a group of mobsters, prominently starring one Goldy Tancred–who has requested police presence, just to keep things peaceable–and the other a conference of electrical engineers. The hotel is suddenly hit by a strange, complete, darkness that deactivates electrical and mechanical devices and can only be barely pierced by acetylene torches–such as are being carried by a small hit-squad that brutally assassinates…a random engineer at the banquet. The obvious conclusion is that Goldy Tancred and his ilk, in the west ballroom, were the targets, and the engineer in the east room was killed by mistake. Goldy certainly seems to believe this, as he promptly goes into seclusion, but although New York’s finest ace detective considers the motive clear, The Shadow thinks differently, and moves to investigate.

What is Goldy’s real game? Where is the source of the Black Hush? How is Harry Vincent going to screw up this time?

Read it and find out…

Rated: There’s also a thrilling death-from-above entry via autogiro, it’s kind of awesome.

The Shadow Magazine #22 – The Creeping Death

So, The Creeping Death is the twenty-second The Shadow story, and was published in 1933. And it’s a bit strange to come back to after the more settled formula of the later Shadow books.

The Lamont Cranston persona is a colder, more impressive figure–less of the languid man-about-town and more of a) a financier chiefly interested in money and new inventions (Cranston would probably have quite a lot of SpaceX stock, one surmises), b) very obviously a disguise used by a dangerous and indomitable figure. But, then to remind us that we are in fact dealing with a master of disguise, there’s also the not-nearly-as-transparent Phineas Twambly, a doddering and nearly-deaf old man who couldn’t possibly be less of a threat to the men staking out the lobby of the Westbrook Falls Inn and eyeing each other like the predators they are.

Then there’s the plot, which–in good form for the earlier books–is carried primarily through the actions of the villains, and seen primarily through either their eyes or the eyes of the proxy hero, in this case Vic Marquette of the Secret Service. The Shadow himself lurks, listens in, silhouettes, menaces, and only just intervenes to tip the scales here and there, mostly just letting the bad guys play out their mummery amongst themselves with hilarious and deadly results. Until–well, you’d have to read the book to see. Heroes react; great heroes act; smart heroes decide when to act and when to stand back and utter a soft, grim, mocking laugh at the follies of others.

The titular creeping death is introduced in the first chapter, when a Mr. Jerry Fitzroy collapses and dies in his hotel room, only barely able to gasp out a few words–words seemingly overheard only by the hotel physician and detective. Some part of the mystery is cleared promptly, when Fitzroy is revealed to be a Secret Service agent, recently returned from a trip to the small town of Westbrook Falls. The gold coin in Fitzroy’s pocket is one of a strange kind that has been recently flooding the market: a strange alloy with the appearance and physical qualities of gold that still is not gold. The partridge feather in his pocket is a little more mysterious….but not to The Shadow.

And not, for very long, to the audience either, with the introduction of elderly inventor/chemist Lucien Partridge and his hidden laboratory in Westbrook Falls. Partridge has a business arrangement with several other American businessmen, who believe they are exploiting him for the synthetic gold which they receive and distribute. The reverse turns out to be the case…and, what’s more, Partridge’s network is worldwide: he has multiple contacts in multiple countries through which he is exchanging fake gold for real, which he has stored on the grounds and with which–and the creeping death–he intends to launch a reign of terror which will ultimately end with him becoming world emperor.

But in the meanwhile and somewhat more pressingly, he going to have to deal with some internal personnel and management problems first. You see, it has occurred to multiple branches of his organization that “fake gold out -> real gold in = somewhere, massive stockpile of real gold.” And the Americans, the French, and the Spaniards, all want a much bigger cut than what they’re getting.–and therein lies the meat of the story, watching them variously blunder, plot, counterplot, form alliances, sneak, backstab, and bluster as they jockey for position and information–all under the glittering eye and grotesque shadow of…The Shadow!

The villain himself, Lucien Partridge, is an interesting mix of megalomania and practicality. Yes, he wants to be the emperor of the world and believes he will be welcomed with open arms at the end of, well, a rain of terror–but he has a fairly chilling plan for enacting said terrorism, and a very practical one for bankrolling it. He’s resourceful and cunning enough to have agents in many countries and be collecting revenue from each of them. And he controls the Creeping Death, an insidious and almost undetectable method of murder which leaves its victims unmarked, able to travel far away from the cause of their death while leaving their murderer unsuspected. (Although he did have to knife Li Tan Chang to get its secrets. What happens in Shanghai stays in Shanghai.)

The Shadow’s usual agents are scarce this time. Harry Vincent gets about half a page of screentime, which might have contributed to why this mission had such smooth sailing. So the primary proxy hero is Vic Marquette, and he’s…okay. For a Fed.

And…the cover art is fantastic.

And that’s about all I have to say. This is a top-notch early Shadow story, and if you know the genre, know the author and his style, you know that means a rippin’ good yarn. You really can’t ask for better than that.

Rated: This your final warning, Jose! Those that disobey my word–die!

Frazettesque Friday – Creeping Death

Cover by George Rozen

The Shadow Magazine #42 – Mox

So. One of the ways that The Shadow’s mysterious ways remained mysterious is by not including his point of view. He is shown, in certain stories, either as a gliding, cloaked-and-hatted shape through the, uh, somewhat dispassionate lens of the omniscient narrator–observing and describing his actions but offering little concrete commentary on his motivations.

Some books don’t even have an alter-ego for The Shadow–only spectral laughter and sinister whispers; some books have him assume an entirely new personality for the length of the story, discarding it and revealing himself only to thwart evil at the climax.

Alternatively, sight of The Shadow is filtered through the eyes of a POV character…who is generally far, far from omniscient. This contributes to the overall mystery (since they are generally baffled and/or completely wrong about their deductions,) or to the plot (because Harry Vincent is going to a) get clobbered and kidnapped, b) screw up his mission. Sigh.)

In this case, the narrative viewpoint largely follows Joe Cardona, currently an Acting Inspector and generally regarded as the ace sleuth of New York City’s police force–largely because of assistance from a certain black-clad force of justice and vengeance that he cannot formally admit exists, especially to his skeptic boss. “Mox” is Jarvis Moxton, a wealthy speculator whose name soon becomes of interest to investigators looking into the death of contracting agent, Schuyler Harlew. (How that happens is admittedly via a long, long shot, but for such deductions is The Shadow famed.) It transpires that Mox–Moxton–has been locating inventors of promising but underfunded projects, luring them to his countryside lair with promises of money and support, and there–at the stroke of midnight–destroying them! The Shadow puts the pieces together just a tad too late to save another unlucky victim, but he vows that no others will so die!

He succeeds, too, in a brief-but-awesome battle that a) saves an innocent life, b) decimates Mox’s henchmen, c) reveals Mox’s true nature to local authorities, and d) forces Mox into flight. Local authorities, in the person of the cool and cantankerous Sheriff Junius Tharbel, soon seem to have cracked open the case–much to the displeasure of the visiting Joe Cardona, who begins a bitter and one-sided rivalry as a result–but the question still remains to be solved as to where–or who–of the suspects Mox truly is. Junius Tharbel has jurisdiction; he also has the scoop. And a material witness. And also a dog….and yet who seemingly has more interest in going off huntin’ with his country hick friends (you know: the short fat one and the tall thin one) than in tracking down Mox.

The dog is a Dalmatian by the way, which are not actually great pets. They have a high prey drive and can be very aggressive. Also, they have a congenital tendency to deafness and need special food because they also have a tendency to kidney disease. Anyway, the dog is also a material witness in the case. But how does Junius Tharbel actually plan to crack this case–and, more importantly, does The Shadow?

I’ve also talked at length before about how Walter B. Gibson never cheapens his work by letting The Shadow’s power level vary strategically with circumstances. It’s never conveniently just one notch above his current adversaries: it’s always at eleven. Sometimes The Shadow mows through opponents easily: if, for instance, he’s up against a handful of disunified, poorly-coordinated mooks in a dimly-lit area, or if he gets into a hand-to-hand fight with someone whose only combat experience is brawling with other thugs. Sometimes, he struggles rather more–giant Mongol henchmen are always a toughie; and gangsters prepared with anti-Shadow ordnances such as machine guns and spotlights, definitely make things very hot indeed. And sometimes he does get flat-out beaten to the punch, such as when he attempted to jump a squad of Japanese jiu-jitsu masters, or accidentally triggered a voice-activated murder robot.

But when The Shadow is on the struggling side, Gibson never cheats on his behalf to even things back up. Mongol warriors don’t suddenly lose their fighting skills or their brains; they get outmaneuvered, or they end up fighting Jericho Druke, or they get shot. Murder robots…actually, I forget how that one got solved, that was kind of weird. Spotlights get shot out. Carloads of crooks get sniped from mobile or covered positions; they don’t all die, but they are scattered and forced to retreat. Ninja masters get the snot scared out of them in a darkened room and The Shadow gets his last laugh. There’s a real-world logic to the winning of these conflicts that lends them–no matter how outlandish the situation–a verisimilitude, a weight and tension, that’s absent from other stories of the kind.

Clyde Burke liaises with Cardona and Tharbel, and The Shadow glides about in the background, communicating via phone calls and whispers so sinister his own agent gets the chills. There’s a spidery henchman who kills on the stroke of midnight, a death-pit, hidden rooms, secret identities, and red herrings galore.

And so it goes.

This is really a superb Shadow story, so much so that it received a follow-up, Crime County, several years later, starring Junius Tharbel and a dog named–Mox.

Rated: W-A-D-E-H-O-S-T-H-I-S-T-H-E-S-H-A-D-O-W

The Shadow # 203 – Crime at Seven Oaks

See the cover? That’s a dog. This is a great story, hands-down, QED. Any book that has a dog in a prominent role is automatically a winner. This is a rule that crosses genres: any scifi, mystery, fantasy, or western story that has a dog, jumps at least three points. (Westerns that also highlight the importance, not to mention the personalities, of the horses involved, gain five points. Science fiction tends to be more about cats, but that’s hearkening back to the “space-navy” side of the equation, rather than the “pulp Westerns IN SPACE” genre foundations.)

Needless to say, Vulcan the Great Dane is basically the co-hero of this novel, and it’s a story that is perfectly pleasing in almost every way. (It helps that this story follows #202, Prince of Evil, written by Theodore Tinsley and squarely in the with the salaciousness cranked up until the knob falls off but the intelligence turned to “Is this thing on?” A fine read, to be sure, but definitely a lesser effort.)

It’s one of those stories that showcase Walter B. Gibson’s adroitness for keeping The Shadow’s adventures fresh and interesting by varying the setting, genre, and supporting characters’ roles. In this case, rather than New York City, the little town of Northdale is the backdrop and the setting is a lonely estate mansion (Seven Oaks) on whom troubles already hang and disaster portends. The genre is, well, it’s still pulp noir but with added dollops of gothic melodrama; and there is a madwoman, her nearly-equally disturbed husband, their quasi-telepathic twins, a mysterious stranger, a weirdly chipper young doctor–and as mentioned, the main secondary hero (and, frankly, the most successful impromptu agent The Shadow has ever employed) is a dog.

So. It’s a dark and stormy night, (because of course it is) and a man with the initials C. T. is waylaid and robbed at the very gates of Seven Oaks. He’s Carl Thayer and he’s saved by the intervention of The Shadow–who has been trailing Clint Flenn’s mob for a while–and makes it to the house, there to receive sympathetic and medical treatment, mostly at the hands of Janice Melridge. Janice and Bob are the twenty year old twins who have apparently little to do but wait to come of age and worry over their mother’s condition, and when your mother spends most of her time talking about voices and banshees, and your father is getting frustrated to the point of choking her out, who wouldn’t be? So the middle-aged but still handsome Carl Thayer finds a warm welcome and proceeds to make the most of it.

Clint Flenn, meanwhile, finding the spoils from the opening brigandage rather measly, decides on kidnapping the Melridge moll for ransom as the next move. The Shadow himself is listening in on this conference, however, and and so begins a cat-and-mouse game that progresses through the halls of Seven Oaks, the streets of Northdale, and the cavern-fractured countryside beyond. To summarize events would be to spoil, and this is actually one of those stories that, even knowing Gibson’s penchant for twists and reversals, kept me guessing until the end.

There are no other agents in this particular story, which is fine, because once Vulcan gets recruited by The Shadow, he does a lot of heavy lifting, including one nick-of-time rescue during a three-way battle involving a box of incriminating evidence and a safe full of payroll deposits, that leaves Bob Melridge, his rescuee, completely baffled, heh.

We all have witnessed how terrifying The Shadow is to malefactors, evil-doers, thugs, and malcontents; the flip side of this is that he is a calming, reassuring, instantly trustworthy presence to the innocent, even if they’re the kind of innocent who don’t look it, having been thrust into a frame and are panicking and lashing out. Dogs, naturally, are no exception. Previous stories has seen The Shadow square off against hostile guard dogs, and either hiss or glare them into submission. Vulcan gets the hiss treatment and promptly begins play-fighting with The Shadow’s cloak sleeve, but we are also reminded that he’s a dog on whose judgment the family relies to begin with. And with good reason. (Vulcan also has had some police/guard training, which is what makes him a useful ally in the first place.)

Now, Gibson avoids the trap of making Vulcan too intelligent by letting him be governed by The Shadow, and The Shadow’s superb competence. It’s by making him the only agent to actually follow orders successfully, that allows him to be the hugely effective good boy he is. Harry Vincent is really lucky Vulcan didn’t decide to follow The Shadow home at the end.

The other characters are interesting as well, given the gothic melodrama / gangster noir genre blend of the book, briefly but adroitly handled by Gibson. Clint Flenn, the gang leader, is actually an interestingly authoritative figure, with an alluded-to history of success, successful alibis, and a proven record of cool-headedness, daring, and marksmanship. Mind you, if he’d been slightly less cool when that rat Trigg Unger started squealing that he’d cornered The Shadow down in the basement, he could have been on to something, but, well.

In some ways this is a throwback story: The Shadow spends much of his time hidden, in Shadow garb, only revealing himself at the very end of the novel; and the Lamont Cranston identity is used sparingly. There are multiple gunfights which end with a satisfying number of bodies–and there’s even an interestingly gruesome moment where The Shadow, providing cover for another escape, crashes his car into a barricade hiding entrenched crooks, sending bodies flying (and earning another concussion, but never mind.) He also pistol-whips a couple of crooks with his .45. If it’s the same style as the gun he used in Spoils of The Shadow, which has a hair-trigger and no safety catch, is it really safe to be using the butt end of the gun to slug people with, though? One wonders. Usually he just bashes people with the muzzle, but there’s an explicit mention of knocking out a sentry with the butt of the gun. Oh well.

There’s a lot more to say about this novel, in some ways, but in others, not really. It’s got gunfights, car chases, a really good boyo, haunted houses, madwomen, psychic twins, gangsters, double-crosses, inheritances, mysterious paintings overlooking events with a somber eye, alibis, taking the heat for your loved ones, and highway robbery. It’s got The Shadow protecting innocents, terrorizing crooks, and solving crimes with a discerning eye and strategic hand that proves why he is and always will be the master foe of evil.

Rated: I heard The Shadow’s ha-ha and I scrammed, boss.