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THE SHADOW
New Adventures

MARK OF THE SHADOW

(Jan 9, 2002)

From May 1966, this is one in the series of eight new Shadow novels published by Belmont. All were written by Dennis Lynds under the 'Maxwell Grant' name. While Lynds is a veteran mystery writer (also known as William Arden and Michael Collins) with his own series of thrillers, and while he has also written a few Executioner books, some Michael Shayne, Nick Carter 'Spymaster' books and the 1974 CHARLIE CHAN RETURNS, his new adventures of the Shadow were not too exciting or satisfying.

MARK OF THE SHADOW seems to take forever to get going, and it's not until the very end that our hero (or the reader) sees any real action. Events are constantly restated and mulled over, there is a lot of unneeded detail on unimportant side-issues, and the usual cast of possible suspects isn't clearly presented. For most of the book, the Shadow is dealing with an odd series of murders in a California town, where a crime commission is gathering to wipe out the Mafia once and for all. (In just a few years, Mack Bolan would be coming along.) Another mysterious group seems to be involved, and toward the finale, the book abruptly swerves wildly into the mid-1960s world of exaggerated spy stories.

The Shadow finds himself confronting CYPHER, a worldwide network of assassins and mercenaries, who operate huge underground strongholds and wear snappy black uniforms. Lynds contributed a number of stories to THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. digest and he seems much more comfortable with the modern supersecret espionage material than with the cloaked avenger of the darkness. Actually, CYPHER itself is not a bad creation. Instead of being a vaguely *Evil* organization, it specializes in permanently removing people for a fee, 'Cypher' meaning 'nothing' is appropriate-- "CYPHER! Nothing! An organization of negation. An International Violence for Hire."

It's probably easiest for Shadow fans to enjoy this if they interpret it as a new incarnation. The pulp version and the old-time radio version were essentially different characters, in much the same way Ian Fleming's James Bond and the Bond in the movies are similar but not identical. This new Shadow has had his powers beefed up to the point where he can mentally take control of a roomful of gangsters, walk unseen past watchful sentries in a well-lit fortress and even open electronic locks by concentrating. The master of darkness has literal super-hearing (called just that) and night vision equal to infra-red goggles.

Yet he's still recognizably the classic character, with the aggressive beaklike nose and burning hypnotic eyes, black cloak and slouch hat. Several times he whips out his 45s and perforates some thugs with fatal punctures. He also does a lot of laughing but it's not described vividly and seems rather forced. Cranston has gray hair, a sign that he's meant to be the original Shadow still active. He has Margo Lane, Stanley and Burbank, and even Harry Vincent still working for him.

Probably the most interesting detail introduced in these books is the name of the Shadow's teacher in the secret arts-- the Master Chen T'a Tze, the only person to have known the crimefighter's true name. (It's clearly stated that Lamont Cranston is just one of the identities he uses in his campaign. "And it did not matter who he had been, what man he had been born. That man was gone. The Shadow was, now, only the Shadow....") In this book, our hero meets a woman who had studied under another disciple of the Master and who has as a result, many of the powers of the Shadow himself. Unfortunately, not much is done with the possibilities of two masters of darkness clashing.

THE SHADOW STRIKES (March 1, 2003) From October 1964, this was the first of the new Shadow novels written by Dennis Lynds after the ill fated RETURN OF THE SHADOW by Walter Gibson himself (RETURN was published without Gibson having a chance to polish the manuscript, and some rough spots show.) THE SHADOW STRIKES is pretty good, being basically a Cold War story of Iron Curtain refugees and the international crooks who take advantage of them. What starts out as apparently a basic if puzzling murder turns out to have Iron Curtain implications and Dennis Lynds was always more at ease with spies and secret agents (this was the golden age of 007* and the Man From U.N.C.L.E. after all). We begin with the odd death of a man known as Jonson... but his real name was Anton Pavlic. And he seems to have the simple victim of a hit and run hotrod accident... but he was already dead when the car ran him over. And then there's the Club Zagreb, where people with Central European names like Josef Brodski and Bela Kodaly have been known to gamble... and now they've committed suicide. There's a benevolent organization called Liberation Front which helps peope escape Communist countries and sets them up with new identities.. but there also seems to be a darker, sinister side to the whole operation. Well. We have here a perfectly satisfying mystery for the Shadow to investigate. It even has one of the classic windups where the police seem to have the whole situation nicely explained and the killer under custody, but there is actually someone else really behind it all... and this, only the Shadow knows! (nyah hah hah....) Lynds' version of the dark avenger has elements of both the pulp and the radio incarnation, updated a bit for the 1960s. The Shadow poses as Lamont Cranston and Kent Allard, as well as Phineas Twambley (ever think you'd see HIM again?) but his ultimate true identity remains unknown. He carries the familiar .45 automatics but really has little need for them because his telepathic abilities are so strong that they have crossed over into becoming a superpower. This Shadow can look up at a witness who is staring at him, and not only cloud the man's mind so he can disappear, he can cause the memory of having seen the Shadow to fade quickly away. Our hero has such strong control over people's minds, although a strong willed man can resist him to some extent, that it seems as if solving mysteries should be a little too easy. To give this super-Shadow a limitation, Lynds establishes that the mind clouding ability can only be used when Cranston is wearing the cape, hat and girasol ring. So he basically has to get into costume to function. (Cranston keeps the outfit folded up in secret pockets of his suits. Nice tailoring, if you can conceal an ankle length cloak and big ol' slouch hat in your suit jacket without any unsightly bulges) In the book's best scene, Cranston has been taken prisoner and is being interrogated. When the torture begins to get serious (a blowtorch to the bare feet, oww), the Shadow goes into a coma like state where he seems to be dead and lets the crooks bury him! Quite a trick, and one that probably is best remembered by anyone who read this book. Margo Lane is still in service, still perfectly willing to run around in a waitress uniform and gather information. Even when she takes a bullet that puts her in the ER, the narrative never refers to her as more than a good friend and assistant. Cardona, Weston, Burbank and even Clyde Burke are mentioned, all alive and on the job. And you can still sign up for membership at the Cobalt Club, if you have a millionaire friend to vouch for you. The book has some odd surprises. I didn't know that Lamont Cranston has greying blond hair, or that he now keeps the Shadow's secret sanctum directly behind a bookcase in his Park Avenue office (seems a bit obvious, if anyone suspects him). And you can tell it's not the classic Shadow when Cranston zips around in his sporty little Jaguar. The strangest moment comes when a hungry Cranston enters a restaurant and orders "an extra large crab meat cocktail with French dressing, a small shrimp salad, a baked potato, and baked prawns Florentine". He also drinks an entire bottle of Clos des Perrieres '59, enjoying every sip. Lynds goes into great detail about how wonderful this wine is. Maybe he was imitating Ian Fleming's style in describing meals or maybe Lynds himself was just hungry when he was writing; it feels wrong for the Shadow, though, who I always saw as too obssessed and ascetic to really enjoy food. Richard Wentworth or Richard Henry Benson would be in character relishing a fine meal. Even Doc Savage in his later years lingered at the table in good restaurants. But I always pictured the Shadow as surviving on very simple food and not really noticing his meals, eating only to stay alive while he brooded over some new mastermind's activities. ___________ *The Shadow discovers a pipe which is actually a gas weapon used by "the Soviet Secret Police branch known as Smersh - a murder and watchdog unit now said to be defunct." Ian Fleming mentions this little toy in several of the James Bond books.

NIGHT OF THE SHADOW (July 16, 2002) From November 1966, this is another in the series of eight new Shadow adventures written by Dennis Lynds under the honorable house name, Maxwell Grant. Unfortunately, although it's readable, THE NIGHT OF THE SHADOW is not particularly lively or inventive. If you had sampled this book to see what this Shadow guy was like, you wouldn't be excited and rush out to find more. Even sadder, if you thought this was representative of the series, you'd be unlikely to ever try a few the classic books by Walter Gibson. The actual plotting and prose are okay, but the pace is sluggish and never builds up any urgency. Like the other books Lynds wrote in this revival, there is a great deal of padding, repitition and overstating the obvious. None of the characters ever quite come to life on the page, there`s no convincing details in the Brazil or Malaysia scenes that make the setting appear in your mind, and there are a few moments that just don't work (as when Cranston is trapped in a field of giant man-eating plants which have vines which actually chase people like tentacles). Most disappointing is that the Shadow has much too easy a time destroying his opponents and seems to be just going through the motions. This story starts off with a classic sequence that launched fellow pulp hero Doc Savage on a dozen great adventures. A man desperately trying to reach Lamont Cranston is brutally murdered right outside the office door, not even managing one of those enigmatic dying clues. The fact that the killers are Malaysian and that the victim had a ring of a type made only by Brazilian headhunters give The Shadow all the launching board he needs to start after the mysterious criminals behind the killing. Sending Margo Lane and Harry Vincent to Brazil to investigate, while he himself takes off for Malaysia to work from the other angle, The Shadow quickly is dealing with a vile international conspiracy, biological warfare, the Jarro natives of the Amazon, man eating plants, ex-Nazis, and just about any other ingredient that can be thrown into the stew. Dennis Lynds' interpretation of the Shadow is essentially a new 1960s version, similar to the pulp and radio incarnations but with new details and powers. One interesting twist is that the master of darkness can channel his Chi-type energy from his mind into different senses or body parts. He can enhance his hearing to the point where he can "hear the faint squeal of the rats scurrying deep down in the sewers under the city", and he can do the same for his vision. By concentrating, he is able to focus his power into his hand, so that he's strong enough to snap a padlock. This is something new, and it actually has possibilities. The Shadow in these books is not always super-strong and able to see in the dark, but he can perform these feats if he concentrates on them. But he can also be taken off guard or lose focus enough to be vulnerable. We also learn that the Shadow power can not be taught, only passed on. Only one person can possess the mind clouding ability and other attributes at a time, and the Shadow received his powers when his teacher Chen T`a Tze relinquished them at the moment of death. (Shiwan Khan would find this information startling.) This is the "cloud men`s minds" ability from the radio series, and here it has been expanded beyond mere invisibilty to include mind control and illusion casting. Kent Allard makes one of his rare appearances, and it`s clearly stated that neither Allard nor Cranston are the true names of the man known as The Shadow. Allard walks with a limp, has "dark hair brushed straight back without a parting....he wore a dark mustache under his thick nose." (Really the best place for it.) Kent Allard is well known as an associate of Lamont Cranston, who backs Allard`s expeditions financially. There's no mention of the real Cranston, whose identity the Shadow usurped so long ago-- perhaps he`s passed on by this point. Of the assistants, Harry Vincent and Stanley the chaffeur stroll through the book without really getting a chance to shine. But Margo Lane gets a workout. Not only does she vamp a suspect for information, not only does she endure hours of torture without cracking ("I told them nothing! Nothing!"), she wipes out four thugs pursuing her into the jungle, using boobytraps and shooting two of them dead where they stand. Margo, I didn`t know you had it in you.

RETURN OF THE SHADOW   (March 28, 2002) From September 1963, this is a final Shadow novel by Walter Gibson that is unique in a number of ways. As Will Murray explained in his article "The Men Behind the Shadow", Belmont planned a series of reprints of the original series and Gibson was assigned to write this book as a story that would re-introduce the crimefighter and his cast. However it was then decided to switch to a series of all-new books but at a low rate of pay and Gibson refused. (Confound the fools! They should have either done the reprints or paid Gibson a decent fee and then we would have had half a dozen new Shadow stories by him! Feh.) Belmont continued anyway with the series of eight new Shadow books written by Dennis Lynds (including titles like MARK OF THE SHADOW, THE SHADOW STRIKES and SHADOW- GO MAD!) under the time-honored byline "Maxwell Grant". These books were not bad exactly, just rather lifeless and mechanical. They featured essentially a different incarnation of the character, as the radio version and the pulp magazine version were similar but not the same. For RETURN OF THE SHADOW, Gibson finally saw his own name credited as the writer. Unfortunately, Belmont published his first draft of the book, before he could polish and revise it. Thia is not as disastrous as it might have been for some writers, as by this time Gibson was so experienced a craftsman. But the book does have some stiff writing and a lot of blunt exposition that probably would have benefited by a rewrite. Like Doc Savage, The Shadow saw his last book in the original canon published in 1949, and this book could easily have been issued at that time. There are two or three references that indicate a later time period (the popularity of monster movies at the local drive-in and the New York State Thruway*, for example) but basically this could have been a final issue of the pulp. No mention is made of time having passed, there are no gray hairs or agents nearing retirement. Gibson took pains to re-introduce almost all of The Shadow's agents, sometimes only for a few paragraphs, establishing their roles and specialties. Margo Lane is conspicously absent, though, not even mentioned in passing. Harry Vincent accompanies Cranston instead. The Shadow himself is the familiar, impressive master of stealth and disguise, making a dramatic first appearance as Harry's car goes over a cliff, deftly manipulating the authorities and the criminals alike, and finally showing up with the black cloak and slouch hat, an automatic blasting in each hand. He seems to have cut down on his gloating laughter, though, saving it for the finale. The oddest thing about RETURN OF THE SHADOW, though, is the way it abruptly shifts gears halfway through and seems to become an entirely different book. We start off with a classic murder mystery set-up in upstate New York, complete with a cast of suspects and careful establishing of who left the scene first and which alibis seems solid. This goes on for a while and then suddenly Cranston returns to Manhattan and starts dealing with a series of international politicians who have been kidnapped and replaced by imposters. (Puzzled look on readers' faces...) The two plotlines do eventually tie together but it seems a bit forced and by the time we learn who the killer was in the first chapters, it seems almost irrelevant. On the other hand, Gibson does give us a wild finish, as an hysterical mob, escaping from some dungeons, comes upon a museum of weapons from all over the world, and the pursuing guards are embarassed by the results. __________ *Spelled "Throughway" here, for some reason.