Status Updates From Hands in the Dark

A mystery ending where only the reader - and the Shadow - knows what truly happened. I appreciate it.

And for once, Harry Vincent wasn't completely useless!

One thing we can always appreciate these stories for is their remarkably progressive racial attitudes. Zero stereotyping. Very nice for something written in the thirties.

Just waiting for the same for gender roles...

Every crook in town recognizes the laughter of The Shadow, but still they go out and try do their crookeries. No matter how much time passes, how many villains are dealt away with, there's always more coming along. Where do they come from? How bad is the local economy to keep them coming no matter what? Shouldn't the heroes be dealing with things from the top?

We started out so well, and then along come the death-traps, as contrived and idiotic as ever. Perhaps even more so with the victim being a young girl this time around. Could've done a lot less cartoony villainies to her.

And then The Shadow rescues her but doesn't seem to bring her along as an agent, even though she's already proven herself smarter and more resourceful than Harry Sullivan ever was. Tsk.

That mystery was solved quick, but it's fine, new ones come in its place. Someone I took for a hero turns out to be a villain! Always great.

And The Shadow himself sticks to the background and doesn't show up much, as he should. But at the same time, he was now name-dropped by the crooks and is well established as a hero, so the red herring there got ditched. That's too bad.

Now there's an opening for a book and no mistake! In medias res, skulking about in the dark up to no good, then someone up to even less good shows up to strangle... drew me right in.

Then we'll follow a couple new faces and set up the Shadow himself as a potential villain. If this were my first book in the series (and if I hadn't noticed the lack of signature laughter in chapter 1), I might even fall for it.