Mobsmen on the Spot

April 1, 1932.

In a way it's not at all surprising that the Shadow is still popular today and his popularity may even be growing. One thing about the Shadow: the evil men get taken care of, one way or another. Most of them, it seems, end up dead. If not dead, they are at least arrested and put away for a very long time, unlike today's world where evil people with kill themselves or get a relatively short prison term, if that much. The nature of crime was also simpler, then. Evil people hurt other people physically, killing them, injuring them, robbing them or something of the like. In today's world, many of the evil people sit at the top of corporations and agencies and are able to cheat people out of their money and get away with it, sometimes even getting paid a lot of money for doing good at fleecing people.

A new agent for the Shadow appears in this story, Cliff Marsland who had served his own time in prison. He's the perfect agent for finding out information from other crooks since he fits in so well with them, having been considered a crook himself (although he wasn't actually a crook at all).

The story involves various rackets that were set up at the time. A racket was when a crook, or group of crooks, obtained control over some branch of business, like dock work, for example, skimming money from them. If the people didn't go along with that, they tended to get hurt, bad. One guy refuses to give in and the crooks kidnap his daughter. Clyde Burke and Burbank are also in the story.

The Shadow uses a silencer on his gun (for the first time). He also shows how he can climb the sides of a building, although the rubber cups he wore later don't seemed to be used this time. There's also an indication that the man who is the Shadow had worked with Marsland during World War I, possible on something to do with codes.


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