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IDENTICAL_SHADOW

                                             April   5, 2010
                                             August 11, 2011

"The Blackmail King" (1941),
Maxwell Grant                        The second of the novels
                                     with a "Margot Lane"
This one is clearly written          character dropped in place.
by Walter Gibson.

For one thing, his trademark
needlessly imprecise adjectives
are in play:

   "So Harry was safe, though his
   car was damaged, judging from
   the bangy sounds."

More interestingly, Gibson's obsession with
identity is strongly in evidence -- as well
as his *complete inability* to write about
it in anything like a sensible way.

Margot Lane is kidnapped at one point,
having been mistaken for another woman
(a natural mistake, since she was within
six blocks or so of the actual target...
that's the *only* reason, there's no
physical resemblence, for example).

There's another scene where a man is                    SHADOW_LAUGH
confronted in his office by his own
double, and the double threatens to            This is strikingly similar
make trouble by pretending to be the           to the scene early in the
other guy and doing mildly                     series where the real
incriminating things.                          Lamont Cranston encounters
                                               the Shadow disguised as
The man considers immediately calling          himself.  This nightmarish
in witnesses into his office to                scene resonated with the
establish the existence of a double,           author in some way, leaving
but this is rejected, for no good              him compelled to rewrite it
reason.  A fight ensues where the bad          in incoherent ways.
guy dies, and once again, for no good
reason, the authentic one decides to           A man ruled by identity,
run for it, so that it will look as            never quite mastering it.
though he himself had been killed.



                                               There's probably some
                                               potential in this material,
                                               and I would guess this
                                               scene has been re-written
                                               many times in the long
                                               history of shape-shifters
                                               and masters of disguise.

                                                  The original
                                                  encounters
                                                  the duplicate.

                                                  The duplicate
                                                  encounters the
                                                  original.




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