[The Shadow 312] • Murder in White

MURDER IN WHITE was published in the February-March 1947 issue of The Shadow Magazine. It's the white of a hospital. The Rabout Memorial Hospital, where murder has taken place. And more murder yet awaits. ELLIOTT WARNING!!! This was the eighth of Bruce Elliott's Shadow novels. He'd go on to do seven more before his infamous reign would be over and Walter Gibson would return to authoring the mysteries. Elliott is probably best known for writing several Shadow novels in which The Shadow never appeared. This is one of them. Lamont Cranston appears in this story, and no other incarnation of The Shadow appears. And yet they let this run as the lead story in The Shadow Magazine... (sigh...) Commissioner Weston appears, representing the law. And Moe Shrevnitz appears. Harry Vincent and Burbank make very brief token appearances. Moe is only referred to as "Shrevvie" and Burbank runs a telephone answering service. Yes, this is definitely a Bruce Elliott story. Not anything like The Shadow pulp mysteries we know and love. As to the plot, let's keep it brief. Thomas Melltin, prominent industrialist, died in Rabout Memorial Hospital. It was a simple operation; there should have been no complications. So Dr. Arnold Bennit is being accused of malpractice. Lamont Cranston agrees to help out, and fakes an injury to enter the hospital under the assumed name of Larry Crimmins. Once he's on the inside, he can investigate. But he can't investigate as The Shadow, because everything's white and the lights are never turned off. He can't blend into the darkness. There is no darkness! And that's the explanation we're given why The Shadow never appears. So Cranston wanders around the hospital, his arm in a cast, looking for clues. Soon, another man dies. Francis Jolas, a stock promoter, dies in the hospital of complications from alcohol poisoning. And it turns out there is a connection between Jolas, Thomas Melltin, the previous casualty, and Dr. Arnold Bennit. They all used to be partners in a mining operation. Now Dr. Bennit's the only one left. Lamont Cranston must work to clear Dr. Bennit. But is he really as innocent as he claims? Who else is involved? And how are these "accidents" being intentionally accomplished? Cranston whips out the solution in amazingly short order. Or "mercifully" short order, as it were. This story is mercifully short at under 19,000 words. Walter Gibson's Shadow novels were usually in the high forty thousands. You won't get many insights into The Shadow or the cast of regular characters by reading this story. That's because so few are present. We only get to see Harry Vincent and Burbank for a few paragraphs. And Moe "Shrevvy" Shrevnitz appears only slightly longer. The one tidbit of information that we do find here, is that Cranston complains that Commissioner Weston is the worst hypochondriac in the world. "Tell him three symptoms and the following day he thinks he has the disease." Weston, of course, denies it: "I just am not a well man, that's all!" In Gibson's novels, by contrast, Weston was always quite robust. Oh well, chalk it up to Bruce Elliott again... The good news? I don't have any more Bruce Elliott stories to review. All fifteen of them are now on my web site. Yes, I've read them all! Now, with those out of the way, I can concentrate on the remaining Walter Gibson stories. A task I'm looking forward to! It's not a bad mystery novel. It's just a bad Shadow mystery novel.