No Safety in Numbers

Just horrible.  How was anyone supposed to know this was a Shadow novel?!  Oh, yeah, the terribly redesigned, generic logo.  Well, that should make long time fans excited for another adventure, right?  That should be enough to hide the fact that Bruce Elliott is writing as Maxwell Grant, right?  We sure wouldn't want our homogenized version to be confused with the scourge of the underworld, the hero who ruled the newsstands for nearly the entirety of the 1930's.  The original title of this "adventure" was "The Number of Death" and that number was 16.  As in only sixteen more tales over the next three years.  Eleven of them by Bruce.  Even Walter penning the last five couldn't bring The Shadow Magazine back from the edge of demise.  Luckily for us, Walter and the editorial staff had built such an enduring and deeply intriguing character that we, as fans new and old, would see a couple of revivals, one of which we are in the midst of (thank you very much, Anthony Tollin).