The Living Shadow

This is the first Shadow story which appeared on April 1, 1931. It's sort of an introduction to the Shadow but, as such, does not give any actual background to the character.

Most of the book actually deals with Harry Vincent, a man who was going to kill himself but was stopped by the Shadow. He then becomes one of the Shadow's agents and we see a little about how they operate. He's to keep watch on a certain man and report to Claude Fellows, another of the Shadow's agent.

The Shadow is investigating the robbery and murder of a millionaire and, as with Shadow novels, things are not ever as simple as they seem at first. Harry Vincent has to visit someone named Wang Foo and that visit goes terribly wrong but he's rescued by the Shadow. Then Harry poses as a cab driver and nearly gets himself in more trouble and again the Shadow rescues him.

We also get to see a little about how the Shadow thinks and works when he takes a report from Fellows, cuts it into sections, rearranges those and adds his own words, forming a complete story of what actually happened in the robbery.

The story is really good with the characters well done and interesting (including the villains), the Shadow mysterious and the mystery itself rather complex. A very, very good introduction to the adventures of the Shadow.

One additional note; the 1938 movie, International Crime, seemed to be based on perhaps one single page of the novel in which the Shadows use of a radio program is revealed. That entire (and thoroughly awful, with a capital "A" ) movie seems to have been based on this premise. (Outside of that it had absolutely nothing to do with the Shadow.)

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