Though The Shadow has enjoyed a long life, I personally had never run across him – bad movies aside – until THE SHADOW: CRIME, INSURED / THE GOLDEN VULTURE, the first in a planned long line of trade-paperback reprints, each collecting two novels of Walter Gibson’s cloaked and strangely nosed hero.

Of the 282 novels Gibson wrote for the character, I’m wondering if there wasn’t a better pick to kick things off than CRIME, INSURED, because it was a dull introduction. When The Shadow proves too adept at lowering the city’s crime rates, a ruthless businessman begins selling crooks insurance policies that their misdeeds will be handled successfully. It’s a stupid idea – both on the page and in real life – with surprisingly little action and far too many bad guys to keep track of.

Better is the second half, THE GOLDEN VULTURE, perhaps because it was the first and only Shadow novel written by Doc Savage creator Lester Dent. Its narrative is more straightforward, with an underworld gang ruled by the titular villain, who commands them to carry out murders and disguise them as suicides. It has more action, even devoting a full-page to an annotated illustration depicting a three-point plan of the Shadow and Det. Joe Cardona’s infiltration of the bad guys’ boathouse.

Seeing Edd Cartier’s original pulp illustrations is a nice touch, as are the supplemental essays preceding each chapter, with Anthony Tollin giving background on The Shadow’s history as a character and Will Murray detailing VULTURE’s troubled and delayed journey from the typewriter to the typesetter. These reprints are nicely done and sure to be welcomed with open arms by Shadow fans, but with my first bite, I can’t rightly count myself as part of that group. –Rod Lott

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