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In Apr 1931, the pulp magazine publisher Street and Smith issued the first title in The Shadow series, The Living Shadow, which turned into 282 of 325 official stories penned by Walter B Gibson under the pseudonym Maxwell Grant. Though the idea actually for The shdoaw started as a narrator's introduction to a radio series Detective Story Hour in July 1930, it wasn't long before the hit pulp magazine generated its own radio series, a few years later starring a young and "undiscovered" Orson Welles as "the voice".
The opening scene is memorable: a young man is about the commit suicide leaping off a bridge in New York City but is rescued even after his feet have left the bridge by a cloaked figure. In a ride back to town, the young man must commit to "serve" his resucuer -- no questions asked! -- in exchange for his life and a handsome future lifestyle. His benefactor turns out to be The Shadow, a mysterious crime-fighting vigilante. In this story, concerned with a crime syndicate based in New York's Chinatown, current day readers may cringe at stereotypes ... but part of the charm of the stories is that they transport you back to an urban landscape just starting to feel the effects of the depression, and an age with WWI still fresh in its memory and the prohibition already in force.
Condé Nast is the current owner of the Street and Smith publications. At this time, not a single one of the over 300 The Shadow novels is in e-print, although a number of the novels are in licensed specialty small press reprint paper editions and second hand stores carry mass paperback copies issued in the 1970s and beyond. You may also be successful finding a Darknet Digital Edition.
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