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Title: The Black Master
Series:
The Shadow #8
Authors: Maxwell Grant
Rating:
3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages:
174
Words: 82K
From the
Publisher & Bookstooge.blog
Five die and many are injured when Wall Street is bombed, followed by
Grand Central Station and the subway entrance at Columbus Circle.
When a reporter for The Classic claims to have information on the
bomber's identity, the office explodes. As the death toll rises, The
Shadow races to uncover who is the bomber known as The Black Master.
Turns out the Blackmaster is a german scientist who had a sister back
in the day. Said sister married an American and died from starvation.
The american went on to become a multi-millionaire and the Black
Master has decided that HE is the one to mete out justice for his
sister’s death. If a multitude of New Yorker’s must die in the
process, that is a price the Black Master is willing to pay.
The Shadow is not a big fan of this course of action and sets himself
in opposition. Of course he wins and destroys the Black Master, who
was also a crime fighter helping the police with his new fangled
german “criminal psychology”.
First things first. This is not some filthy urban fantasy erotica
porn. I mention this because I am reading the Shadow omnibuses and so
have to search out the individual titles to find the covers, pages,
etc. The crap I had to wade through was not right. I ended up
searching for ISBN 9780450027420 to get the correct info. So use
that, not the title if you’re ever searching this out.
Second thing. This gave me YUUUUGE 9/11 vibes. New York was getting
bombed and there was panic in the newspaper and speculation was rife
and nobody knew what was going on. It reminded me exactly of my
experience on 9/11. I was working and the radio was going nuts. There
were “reports” of bombs going off in cars, of bombs going off in
garbage cans, of “sporadic gunfire”. The *&^%%% media didn’t
know what was going on and they let their speculation run rampant and
increased the panic. Until the plane hit the towers, nobody actually
KNEW what was happening. That sense of bewilderment was spot on. Of
course, in this novel everybody just goes back to normal the next day
and life carries on.
Thirdly, the Crime Fighting Psychologist. Come on, I mean, really? As
soon as it was revealed that he was german and profiled criminals, it
was painfully obvious he was the Black Master. And if that comes as a
spoiler to you, shame on you for being so gullible. It reminded me of
the first episode in the Sherlock tv show with Benedict Cumberbatch
and one of the police officers, who is not a fan of Sherlock, tells
Watson that someday Sherlock will get bored of solving crimes and
begin committing then. That is the exact vibe I got from Dr
Proffessor Germano (yeah, yeah, whatever, who remembers his real name
anyway?) and so as soon as he was introduced he had a big fat arrow
pointing to him screaming “Dah Black Meister!”
Now, with all of that being said, I still enjoyed the daylights out
of this story. The Black Master was a very worthy adversary for the
Shadow and gave him a good run for his money. When a villain seeks to
go head to head against the Shadow in a game of mental manipulation,
you know he’s not just some thug with a .38 police special.
And Harry Vincent gets his brain blasted by the Black Master and his
magic crystal ball. Sadly, we all know he’ll recover and show up in
future books. I would have liked to see his drooling corpse slumped
against a wall. Oh well, not every story can be a completely Happily
Ever After.
★★★✬☆
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