The Shadow, Volume 4: The Murder Master and The Hydra Book

("The Murder Master," 3 stars; "The Hydra," 4 stars)

Few listeners to your radio station? Just predict a few murders over the airwaves to spike those Arbitron ratings a bit. "The Murder Master," the title character in the lead novel of this double-Shadow reprint, does just that. He decrees the deaths of three prominent men at five-minute intervals, then adds another future victim at the end of the pirate broadcast for good measure ' The Shadow! The MM gets three out of four right, anyway, and the fourth ' our man-in-black caped crusader ' actually shows up at the radio station and gives MM a crack at No. 4, even though the baddie couldn't possibly have expected the Shadow to show up.

That radio voice of doom is a nice one-off trick but one that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. At one point, The Shadow commandeers a steamroller at the scene of an exciting bank robbery, perhaps symbolizing the gaping plot holes he can drive it through. By far the most glaring gap in logic involves the ol' closing-steel-walls death trap. The Murder Master watches The Shadow for a time as the walls close in but skips the climactic moment (The Shadow escapes, of course) ' and completely forgets there's supposed to be a smushed Shadow in his death pit. He seems to have no inkling later that he survived. Villain note to self: Check death traps!

"The Murder Master," which involves parolees posing as reformed aids to the law but helping to pull off major crimes instead, is a pretty good, if chaotic, tale, with some thrilling moments, including a haunting opening with the radio decrees.

The second story, "The Hydra" is a splashy, exciting pulp that's quite notable for its quality as a 1940s ('42) Shadow tale, if again having a few too many improbable moments (I know, you gotta forgive the pulps). Here a criminal organization, like the mythological Hydra, sprouts a pair of new bosses for each one that's vanquished.

The Shadow has a rip-roaring escape after being locked in the Museum of Mechanical Science when its exhibits run wild and try to kill him; a razor-edge escape from a guillotine that's a prop in a live stage play; and a gun-blasting showdown with the Hydra.

This tale is also notable because a villain finds out the connection between The Shadow and Lamont Cranston, and for one of the very earliest appearances of Margo Lane. The real Cranston, whom The Shadow often impersonates, appears frequently as himself, usually with the Shadow in his Cranston get-up. Fun stuff.

The plot reads as if writer Walter Gibson was barreling through it. That's OK. We do, too. It's pulpy fun.