The Five Chameleons

The story starts off with the Shadow confronting a murderer, Hawk Forster. Hawk starts to tell the Shadow something but invading police interrupt him.

The rest of the novel deals with what Hawk knew something about, a group of men called the Five Chameleons. The group has been working on something for years, setting up a situation where they can use their counterfeiting skills to make a fortune in a town in the Midwest.

The town is Middletown, and here's the funny part. I was born in Middletown, a not-too-big city in the Midwest, so it seems that it's a good chance that town and the one in the novel are the same.

Anyhow, people are killed, an innocent guy is arrested, and a girl asks for help from the Shadow. The Shadow, in his Henry Arnaud disguise, shows up.

What is unusual is that one of the evil guys gets the drop on the Shadow and shoots him, injuring him badly. The Shadow, after that, gets in a number of gunfights, outgunned, outmanned and badly injured yet the Shadow's justice triumphs!

It's a really good story, the 17th in the series, originally published in the November 1, 1932 issue of the Shadow magazine.

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