Review: "Mother Goose Murders" (The Shadow)
John Olsen
issue of The Shadow Magazine. Someone is using Mother Goose rhymes as a
clever code to a series of startling robberies. The Shadow must smash
the intricate web and bring a halt to the viscous crimes.
The Shadow magazine stories from the mid-1940s weren't very good. And
this particular one, "The Mother Goose Murders" is a good example of
that claim. The story gets boring pretty fast, as it's just a series of
robberies and the events leading up to each one as well as the events
following them. It's pretty pedestrian fare, and The Shadow doesn't get
much to do. The plot is tame and so's the action. All in all, this is a
pretty mundane story that has little to recommend it.
Diane Marlow is the proxy heroine in this story. She is swept into
mystery and intrigue. Although perfectly innocent, she finds herself
involved in a jewel robbery. The police think she's an accomplice of the
masked robber, when in actuality, she just happened to be sitting in the
cab that unknown criminal commandeered.
She decides to track down the masked thief, after finding an
accidentally dropped check-stub for shoe repair. She acquires the name
and address of the man with the shoes being repaired, and accosts him at
his apartment house. There she finds the first of a series of Mother
Goose rhymes. Each seems to point to a future robbery, and each draws
her deeper and deeper into some mysterious involvement in crime.
These Mother Goose rhymes are all slips of paper seemingly cut from the
same book of nursery rhymes. That gives plenty of opportunity to run
around looking for the exact book which is important because... well,
I'm still not sure why. Apparently once that book is located, the
mystery will be over.
Near the end of the story, the seemingly important book of rhymes turns
up. While Cranston and Inspector Cardona visit a book shop, the owner
reveals that someone has just delivered a book of Mother Goose stories
with clippings missing from it. Sure enough, this is the
long-sought-after volume! Do they bother to ask who delivered the book?
No, they ignore the opportunity to catch the criminal red-handed, and
prefer instead to look through the book to see which other rhymes have
been excised. This illogic is typical of what plagues this sad story.
And the title is a prime example of false advertising. There are no
murders in "The Mother Goose Murders." Not a single one. It's just a
bunch of robberies where people get tied up. There is one part where one
thug shoots and kills a rival thug, which doesn't really qualify as a
murder. But that's as close as you get in this story. If readers were
suitably outraged after reading this story, they should have been. Rip off!
Let's not forget Margo Lane. She's about as annoying in this story as
she ever gets in the entire series. When Margo started out in the
magazine stories of 1941, she was a capable agent. But by this 1946
story, she's more of a hindrance than a help. Margo considers it "fun"
to thwart The Shadow's intentions. Doesn't she realize the serious
consequences of her frivolous actions? Apparently, not. And so, because
she switches flowers which were supposed to identify Diane Marlow to
Harry Vincent, poor Diane ends up meeting a criminal instead of Harry,
and nearly loses her life. Wasn't that "fun," Margo?
Here's another irritating thing about this story. It becomes pretty
obvious that Lamont Cranston is The Shadow in the final climax of this
story. In Joe Cardona's presence, Lamont disappears only to be replaced
by The Shadow moments later. While The Shadow battles the mastermind on
the roof a burning building, Cardona escorts everyone else outside to
safety. Everyone except Lamont Cranston. He never runs back into the
building to find Cranston. Never shows any interest in Cranston's
strange disappearance. The only answer I can think of, regarding
Cardona's lack of concern for the whereabouts of Lamont Cranston, is
that he knows that Cranston isn't stuck somewhere in the burning
building; he knows that Cranston is on the roof battling with the arch
villain. At least, that's my take on the situation.
Appearing in this story are Lamont Cranston, Margo Lane, Harry Vincent,
Moe Shrevnitz, Burbank, Rutledge Mann, Inspector Cardona, and
Commissioner Weston. Pretty much the standard cast for a 1946 Shadow
mystery. No sign of Cliff Marsland or Hawkeye.
This pulp novel has some superficial similarities with one of the Shadow
radio broadcasts. On February 22, 1948 there was broadcast a radio play
entitled "The Nursery Rhyme Murders." At the end of that half hour, just
as at the end of every other episode, the announcer told listeners that
"You have just heard a dramatized version of one of the many copyrighted
stories which appear in The Shadow Magazine now on sale at your local
newsstand." Was "The Nursery Rhyme Murders" truly a dramatized version
of some pulp story, perhaps "The Mother Goose Murders?"
The radio broadcast told the story of Bert Ustus, a patient in the
private sanitarium, Brookside Home. He has an obsession with Nursery
Rhymes. He escapes, and people start turning up dead, posed in death as
if they were in a nursery rhyme. In the end, The Shadow reveals that
someone else is the crazed serial killer, not poor Bert. That plot is a
far cry from the pulp story being reviewed here in which Mother Goose
stories are used to pass secret messages to a gang of robbers. So only
by the farthest stretch of the imagination could it be claimed that this
one particular radio episode was a dramatized version of the magazine
story "The Mother Goose Murders."
Although the Shadow's radio shows weekly claimed that they were all
dramatized versions of stories appearing in the magazine, the truth of
the matter was that they weren't. None of them. It was just a legal ploy
to assert a copyright claim on the script, since radio scripts couldn't
be copyrighted at the time, and magazine stories could be.
This story is a good example of Walter Gibson's writing at its weakest.
The more I read it, the more aggravated I got. There were just too many
inconsistencies in plot, characterization and logic. If I were you, I'd
stay away from this one.
John
--
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"
The wonderful old pulp mystery stories are all reviewed at:
Dave
along with CRIME OVER CASCO, in a Crime Club volume. Perfectly
dreadful. I couldn't even make a case for keeping it, as I'd never
read it again -- somebody on this group got it for six bucks.
The "associated" radio version is truly awful. It hinges on --
NOT A SPOILER ALERT, AS IT IS SO STUPID
a plot point that Lamont's friend, the head of the lunatic asylum who
calls him in on the case, is actually an imposter and a murderous
maniac himself. Nice detecting, Lamont.
dave