Read the first eight chapters of Terror Island, from August, 1936. Some great sea scenes, and plenty of The Shadow spying, sharp shooting, and fading in and out of darkness as he gathers intelligence, finds hidden loot, ferrets out secret rooms and passageways, and tries to bring the “supercrook” down in his very lair. The Shadow is posing as one of a small group of yacht passengers, who end up becoming castaways on a small island off the Georgia coast. This island, of course, just happens to be the supercrook’s base of operations. The crook’s name is Purvis Elgar, and he seems a harmless older man, but is really a master planner with one of the neatest and atmospheric home bases ever. Here is what seems really different to me about this story. We know The Shadow is one of these castaways, but we don’t know which one. Usually, when Gibson does a story where The Shadow is in disguise most of the story, he emphasizes the work of the agents, and sets us up for the big reveal at the end. In this case, though, there are so far no agents in this story. Gibson tells us what The Shadow is thinking and doing, has him switching back and forth between his disguise and his Shadow persona, but he doesn’t tell us which of the castaways he is pretending to be. So we get plenty of Shadow action, but when the castaways interact and we get to know them as characters, we just don’t know which of the castaways is a Shadow disguise. So….we have a kind of reverse whodunit, as the reader tries to figure out which one he is. Gibson seems to be signaling to me that it is promoter Bram Jalway. He goes out of his way to describe his “frozen half smile” and his “languid” attitude, which certainly suggests to the reader familiar with these pulps his Lamont Cranston disguise, which is aided by some kind of facial mask, accounting for the steady frozen expression. But that COULD be a Gibson misdirect, so we will see. The Shadow’s cleverest trick in the story so far is when he pretends to be the Purvis himself when he gets access to the crook’s telegraph, and manipulates the bag guy’s organization to deliver and receive information for our dark detective. Another clever Gibson strategy. By the way, Gibson goes “overboard” with his strange names. “Bram Jalway” is crazy enough, but “Kingdon Feldworth” is one of his most bizarre concoctions yet. I am VERY interested in what happens next in this weird series entry.
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 04:29:05 +0000
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