Forgotten Books: The Black Falcon - Maxwell Grant (Walter B. Gibson)

I was in the mood to read a Shadow novel, so I went for one of the early ones, “The Black Falcon”, from the February 1, 1934 issue of the iconic pulp. As the story opens, the mastermind who calls himself The Black Falcon has opened his campaign of crime already. He has kidnapped a wealthy banker, and plans are underway to kidnap another of New York City’s wealthy socialites. The Black Falcon is so arrogant that he informs Police Commissioner Ralph Weston of his plans and includes a dyed-black falcon feather with his missive.

But unknown to The Black Falcon, The Shadow is already on his trail, and even though the crime boss may pull off another kidnapping and murder or two, we know that eventually justice, in the form of The Shadow, will catch up to him.

Like many of the early Shadow novels, “The Black Falcon” has a fairly mundane crime plot at its heart. The true identity of the masked mastermind calling himself The Black Falcon is so obvious that author Walter B. Gibson doesn’t even try to maintain that mystery past the middle of the book, revealing that secret and explaining everything else about the plot in a rather awkward conversation between The Black Falcon and his chief henchman that serves as an info-dump for the reader.

However, I don’t think many readers then or now enjoy the Shadow novels solely because of the mystery angles. It seems to me that the two primary elements in the series’ appeal are action and atmosphere, and Gibson delivers on those quite well in “The Black Falcon”. There are several scenes where The Shadow appears unexpectedly, and Gibson always does a great job on those. The same is true of the shootouts between The Shadow and various hordes of gangsters. The bullets really fly in those, and I always enjoy them.

“The Black Falcon” is notable for a couple of other reasons: the actual Lamont Cranston makes one of his infrequent appearances and plays a role in the plot; and The Shadow reveals his true face to The Black Falcon, who is so horrified and stunned that for a vital few moments he falls apart like the narrator of an H.P. Lovecraft story. This story takes place well before The Shadow’s true identity was revealed to be that of aviator Kent Allard. The consensus among Shadow scholars is that Allard’s face was hideously scarred during World War I and still displayed those scars during the early days of his crusade against crime, but later plastic surgery repaired the damage. That seems plenty feasible to me.

While “The Black Falcon” isn’t in the top rank of Shadow novels as far as I’m concerned, I had a great time reading it. I enjoy Gibson’s style, I like The Shadow’s agents (Harry Vincent appears in this one), and the action scenes are very effective. If you’re a Shadow fan, it’s well worth reading.