The Shadow 320 Reign of Terror

REIGN OF TERROR was originally published in the June-July 1948 issue of The Shadow Magazine. A wave of terror had fallen over Manhattan. Intimidation and threats are mounting as crime hauls in the extortion loot. Organized law protection agencies are baffled. It will take The Shadow to sift through the murderous maze of clues to... where? This story is bad, bad, bad. It's bad on so many levels and in so many ways that this review can only touch on the largest and most egregious ones. Let's get it right out in the open, at the beginning. This is one of those "infamous" Shadow pulp novels written, not by Walter Gibson; not by Theodore Tinsley; not even by Lester Dent. That's right, it was from the low point in the history of The Shadow when the stories were being written by Bruce Elliott. As Shadow fans know, the fifteen Shadow novels written by Bruce Elliott between 1946 and 1948 are the worst of the entire 325 issues published. Five of them didn't even contain the character of The Shadow in them! This one does; The Shadow is present, here. So, you see, it could have been worse; much worse! Actually, this one is probably the "best" of the Bruce Elliott stories, if the word "best" can be used properly in this context. There's a gang out there into all kinds of nasty stuff. Ed Corre, who has a reputation for fixing fights, has expanded. Drugs. Torture. Murder. Crime is running rampant, and Ed Corre is the man behind it. It's a real reign of terror. Only The Shadow can stop it all. Drugs are more prevalent in this story than most non-Elliott stories. Not only is there a gang of drug runners to be caught, but one of the gangsters himself is a hophead. In one scene, he's told to go into the bathroom and take his shot, so he'll be ready for the upcoming action. The Shadow appears in this story only as himself. There is no mention of Lamont Cranston, Henry Arnaud, or any of his other disguises. Also appearing are Hawkeye, Burbank, and Shrevvie. But they aren't exactly as we remember them. It's clear from reading Bruce Elliott's Shadow stories that he just didn't get The Shadow. He didn't understand the character and his behavior; he didn't understand the agents and The Shadow's relationship with them. It was as though he wrote these fifteen stories without ever looking at a series bible or even reading one of the earlier pulp stories. Let's take The Shadow. He is changed beyond recognition. He no longer wears a cloak; now he wears a short cape. He still wears his slouch hat, though. He talks way too much; pages and pages of dialog. The Shadow we knew from Walter Gibson's creation would call Burbank and hiss a single command: "Report." But now this new guy, whoever he is, just speaks conversationally, "Any news from Hawkeye?" In the old stories -- the good ones -- if an agent fluffed an assignment, he was given a chance to redeem himself, and nothing further was said about it. But in this new version of The Shadow responds in a warm voice, "Just keep doing your best. I can't ask for more than that." What's with all this familiarity?! The Shadow we all know and love could move through total darkness by just sheer touch alone. Not the guy in this story, though. He rips the tape off his flashlight to give him more light, so he can make his way through an underground passage. The Shadow in this story hesitates when confronting criminals. Knowing he only has two bullets in his gun, he agonizes over whether to challenge them or not. Now The Shadow of old wouldn't have hesitated for a moment. He would have expelled those two bullets immediately, then grabbed up one of the fallen thug's guns and continued spraying the scenery with gunfire. This Shadow is a wimp! Let's also consider how Bruce Elliott treats the agents of The Shadow. Shrevvie (he's no longer Moe Shrevnitz) now talks with a Brooklyn accent (referring to "skirts" as "skoits"). And he knows where The Shadow's sanctum is; he even drives him there. Heresy! This would never, never, never have happened in a Gibson authored story. Or in a Tinsley novel. In their stories, no one knew even vaguely the whereabouts of the sanctum. Oh well, chalk it up to Bruce Elliott... Burbank doesn't seem to have much to do. In the old stories, he would accept reports from the agents and give them to The Shadow. In this one, he just forwards their calls, so they can talk directly to The Shadow. Burbank runs a telephone answering service for The Shadow. And those conversations with the agents are much more casual than before; The Shadow reassures them that they are doing fine, and thanks them for their work. Quite different from the short-clipped reports of facts in the others stories. And as for Hawkeye, he's gone downhill appreciably. He can no longer trail a suspected gang member without losing him. And when we discover exactly how the crook shook his tail, it wasn't all that clever. The Hawkeye we all know from the other novels would never have lost that trail! The Shadow's sanctum seems to have moved. It's on the top of a high office building, a room whose windows have been blacked out. The sanctum I remember never had any windows, blacked out or not! When The Shadow needs to go to a newspaper office to check their records, he goes to a paper called the Clarion. This is proof positive that Bruce Elliott never read any of the previous Shadow pulps. If he had, he would have known to use the Classic, instead. The Classic (also known as The New York Classic, The Evening Classic, The Morning Classic and The Daily Classic) appeared in over a hundred of the old pulp novels. How could Elliott not have gotten that simple thing right?! One of the thing that annoyed me most about this story was the kitchen recipes. In one scene, the reader must suffer through a detailed description of how to make hollandaise sauce. Six full paragraphs go into the careful preparation by our villain Ed Corre. Do we really care that he adds melted butter a drop at a time? Or that he ads a half teaspoon of salt and a speck of cayenne pepper? Give us a break! This is supposed to be a rip-roaring pulp adventure, not a cooking show! Like I said earlier, Bruce Elliott just didn't get The Shadow. His blatant lack of understanding is so glaring that only the most diehard fan will shudder and force himself to read this tripe. And apparently the publisher finally caught on, as well. This story marks an editorial change at Street and Smith, publishers of The Shadow Magazine. They realized that things were doing downhill fast. They were losing readers; losing Shadow fans. Circulation was down. The last five Shadow stories didn't even feature The Shadow. So they directed Bruce Elliott to return The Shadow character to The Shadow Magazine. And so he did, for this, his final Shadow story. After that, they got Walter Gibson to come back and take over the writing of the stories again. Smart move! Yes, this was Elliott's last Shadow story. And surprisingly as it may seem, this may have been one of his better ones. Believe it or not, the others were even worse! Elliott's final Shadow story went out on a high note. Well... a very low note, actually... but a higher low note than normal. By Bruce Elliott standards the story was above average. How can you tell? Because I didn't have to rip out any fingernails to force myself to finish reading it. Usually, when reading a Bruce Elliott novel, I lose either nails or hair. It's a pivotal issue; the mark of the end of the Bruce Elliott run. And that's about all it has going for it. Stay away from this one. If you read it, you'll be sorry. Don't say I didn't warn you. To paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, "This is not the Shadow story you are looking for." I'm waving my hand in a gesture intended to make you forget. I wish I could.