Introducing Cliff Marsland

cover art by George Rozen

The April 1932 issue of The Shadow Magazine featured the novel Mobsmen on the Spot.  Written by Walter Gibson (under the usual house name of Maxwell Grant), this story introduced us to Cliff Marsland,  is a man who did a term in Sing Sing after being convicted of a crime he didn't commit. He's out now and recruited by the Shadow to help break up a multi-layered protection racket that plagues New York City.

That racket is run by a crook named Killer Durgan, though there's a number of other lower-level crooks involved. The novel opens with the Shadow finishing off a scheme to extort protection money from the owners of warehouses. But Durgan is also getting protection money from garage owners, dock workers, and theater owners. Each of these rackets need to be stamped out to bring Durgan down.

With Cliff getting inside information, the Shadow takes down these rackets one by one. At one point, he has Cliff recruit a small gang of his own to work against Durgan's organization. This leads to a wonderful sequence in which Durgan attempts to plant bombs in garages that won't pay protection--only to have those bombs mysteriously transplanted to garages he owns. (They go off at night, so there's no innocent people are hurt.) 

There's a supporting character involved in all this I really enjoy--a crook named Nippy who teams up with Cliff. He thinks Cliff is working to take over the rackets himself and has no idea he's working on the side of the angels. But he's brave and very loyal and even saves Cliff's bacon on a couple of occasions. There's also Madge--Durgan's moll who develops a thing for Cliff, which puts her in great danger.  Her relationship with the very-possessive Durgan is downright toxic and we can't help but feel for her. The Shadow novels are usually very black-and-white in their portrayal of crooks. But in this case, we find outselves liking Nippy and sympathizing with Madge.

As is usual with Gibson's Shadow novels, there's some really fun action scenes. Most notable are a shootout in a night club when Nippy first teams up with Cliff. Later on, Cliff and his mini-gang become mixed up in a massive shoot-out between two gangs at the docks.

As usual, the Shadow keeps popping up at key moments to Cliff save and and/or thin out the ranks of the ungodly. And he's one step ahead of us readers as well--when it seems as if the leader of the racket is finally taken down, we find out this isn't quite true. There's a secret mastermind out there. We don't know this is, but... well, the Shadow knows. 

In the end, the Shadow takes out the main villain in a pretty cold-blooded manner, but the guy definitely had it coming. Besides, who are we to question the methods of the Master of Men?