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Title: The Living Shadow
Series: The Shadow #1
Authors: Maxwell Grant
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 224
Words: 67K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia

Harry Vincent, saved from suicide by The Shadow, is recruited to watch Scanlon, courier for Wang Foo, the Chinatown mastermind. Cronin murders Scanlon, but fails to find the metal Chinese disk Scanlon uses as an identifier. Vincent finds the disk, poses as the courier, is exposed, captured, tortured, and saved by The Shadow. Millionaire Geoffrey Laidlow is killed for his hidden jewels; the rest of the story involves searching for Laidlow's killer, and the killer searching for the jewels, to be fenced with the Chinatown mastermind. In the end, the criminal mastermind's lawyer Ezekiel Bingham, is free and unpunished. Diamond Bert Farwell, exposed as Wang Foo, goes to jail.

My Thoughts:

Riders of Skaith started reviewing the The Shadow books last year. I'm glad I jumped on the bandwagon as I rather enjoyed this novel. But everything Riders says about Harry Vincent is totally true, sigh.

★★★☆☆ ( )

Classic stuff!! ( )

Classic stuff!! ( )

'The Living Shadow' was the first written The Shadow story. It appeared in the 'The Shadow: a Detective Magazine' in 1931. The cover, by Modest Stein, depicts an ominous-looking Chinese man casting a shadow. (According to 'Interlude' by Will Murray in the Sanctum Books reprint, that cover was re-used from a 1919 issue of 'The Thrill Book'. Hey, it had a shadow, right? Walter Gibson was still writing the story when he was told to have a Chinese angle.) This review is for the copy that appears in The Shadow Double-Novel Pulp Reprints #47: 'The Living Shadow' & 'The Black Hush'. That "Interlude" by Will Murray states it's the first reprint of 'The Living Shadow' as it originally appeared. All other reprints are based on the 1934 hardcover reprint, which had been revised and updated. Please keep that in mind if something I note here is different in your copy. (It's been decades since I've read my Bantam paperback with the cover that has The Shadow grinning like a homicidal maniac while both of his guns are blazing, so I don't recall any differences.)

The story is told in third-person, from several viewpoints, the better to keep The Shadow mysterious. 'The Shadow' is what young Harry Vincent decides to call the stranger who prevents him from committing suicide. In return for his life, Harry gets to swear absolute obedience to his savior and gets a new job. (I'm too cynical and suspicious to swear absolute obedience to anyone, so that part of The Shadow's recruitment methods puts me off.) Harry is sent to a nice room in a nice hotel, the Metrolite, and given instructions over the phone. The instructions are meant to seem innocuous to eavesdroppers, but Harry knows how to interpret them. His assignment is to watch the man in the next room. What seems pretty dull at first leads to a noteworthy night and a switch in rooms for Harry. How sad for a man named Steve Cronin that Harry accidentally finds (and keeps) what Cronin was looking for.

Harry nearly gets killed in New York City's Chinatown, but his next assignment in Long Island seems quieter. Sure, Harry is supposed to be getting information about the murder of millionaire Geoffrey Laidlow, but there's no reason to believe the killer is hanging around.

NOTES:

Chapter II. Although the story uses the term 'Negro,' which was politically correct in 1931, I suppose readers of the period would find it odd if the black chauffeur hadn't been addressed as 'Boy' in dialog. The man's dialect errs in having him call Harry 'you-all,' because that's a plural term.

Chapter VII. Here Harry meets another agent of The Shadow, insurance broker Claude H. Fellows. Mr. Fellows had given his boss the same name in his own mind. Besides giving Harry instructions, Fellows explains what happened when he tried to find out about Jonas, a man with an office in Twenty-Third Street, to whom Mr. Fellows had been instructed to send a letter.

Chapter VII: The token Wu Sun, Wang Foo's old friend in California, sends with his messengers is called the token of Hoang-Ho.

Chapter XVI: $600 in 1931 is worth $9,576.67 in 2020, according to dollartimes.com.

Chapter XVIII: The building where Fellows drops off messages for 'B.Jonas' is described. We also learn how Fellows became one of The Shadow's agents.

Chapter XXIV: The Shadow makes use of Radio Station WNX.

Chapter XXVIII: Look here for methods crooks have used to try to find out who The Shadow is when he's at WNX.

The Shadow's first outing in print is full of action, color, and mystery. While I guessed a few things ahead of time, there were several surprises. Readers will have to put up with some of the racist language of the time, but otherwise it's easy to see why the first issue sold out. Poor Harry Vincent is lucky he doesn't wind up in the hospital or dead. There's a thrilling and deadly car chase. One never knows when someone will turn out to be The Shadow in disguise. Luckily for us, coded messages from The Shadow get translated. Love the way The Shadow gets around. If I were a crook, he'd certainly make me nervous!

The only thing lacking for me in this story is Margo Lane. I do recommend it for mystery lovers. ( )

The Shadow is still my favorite of all the pulps. ( )