Dead Men Live

This is the 18th pulp story, originally published on December 15, 1932.

The story is one of the mad-scientist type stories in which a guy (who is working with several other evil men) has found a way to simulate death in other people. He “temporally” kills them, arranges an accident and substitutes a body of someone else that’s been altered to resemble the original victim. He then takes the person to his fortress, revives them and makes them work for him.

One of the Shadow’s agents manages to infiltrate the operation but ends up being caught and actually tortured.

Meanwhile there’s a bunch of mobsters that are helping the evil men out and they end up getting into a major gun battle with the Shadow who they appear to kill.

They didn’t, of course, and the Shadow is able to get a message to his agent in the fortress. The Shadow manages to get into the fortress (in an extremely interesting way) and puts an end to the evil men and their plans.

It’s a really good story although I never did figure out exactly what the mad-scientist type was building. The gunfight scene is very well done and the battle in the fortress is also well done. As with other Shadow stories it’s always fun to try and figure out if the bad guy that is showing up at such-and-such a time is really the bad guy, or the Shadow in disguise.

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