Road of Crime

This is the 39th pulp story, originally appearing on October 1, 1933, and has not appeared in regular paperback form.

Graham Wellerton is the main focus of the story. He’s sort of a “gentlemen crook,” not really into crime that much voluntarily, but he’s being hounded by a woman who claims to be married to him and is always after money.

Then there’s King Furzman, the boss of the mob. There’s also Wolf Daggert, who heads another gang. His gang and Wellerton’s group pull bank robberies. Wolf’s goes terribly wrong when the Shadow shows up and dispenses his type of justice to the crooks. There’s a power play, then, between Daggert and Wellerton for mob position, and King Furzman ends up siding with Wellerton.

The Shadow, though, is there to handle the crime problem, and after stopping Furzman he finds out where gang is going to hit banks elsewhere.

That much is fairly standard, but what isn’t standard, and what is done very well, is the complexity of the Wellerton character. He’s shown not to be inherently an evil person; more the victim of circumstances than anything else. He confronts an evil Uncle who had ruined his father and ends up saving him from an attack; he’s befriended by a man and his daughter, and the Shadow has his agents watching what is going on.

Eventually the Shadow gets to judge Wellerton by his actions, his attempts to atone for the wrong things he has done and his attempts to honestly help people who need help, including returning money to banks that his gang had robbed. When he shows that he’s really trying to live a decent life, the Shadow knows and lets him alone.

It’s a very, very good story, very strong character development.

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