Forged in war, The Phantom Detective wages a one-man battle on crime! Solving impossible mysteries and delivering his own justice, he is the underworld’s masked nightmare!
An invisible hand of doom leads innocent victims to sudden slaughter — while, under the shadow of the big top, a crimson clown laughs grimly at the carnival of carnage! The Phantom Detective finds himself in three rings of terror as he seeks to topple a kingdom built on death!
House names, that is multiple authors writing under a single pseudonym for a series, were fairly commonplace in Pulp magazines. Notable characters often had only one author attached to them on the covers of magazines, but in reality multiple scribes may have added to their legacies. This was no different for The Phantom Detective and actually this particular series may have held the record for the number of authors writing under a single house name, due in part to its 170 issue and twenty year run. It is fairly well accepted that the first eleven issues, all of them under the name G. Wayman Jones, may have all actually been written by noted Pulp author D. L. Champion. The house name changed, however, with issue twelve, switching to Robert Wallace. Some experts and fans have theorized that this was done to perhaps gain some recognition due to the similarly named mystery writer of the period, Edgar Wallace. Although a list of authors contributing to The Phantom Detective has been compiled at various times, no one single author seemed to consistently write the character for any consecutive length of time. Norman A. Daniels wrote the most stories under the Wallace name, penning more than 36 tales. If nothing else, the multitude of writers on The Phantom Detective series guarantees fans a variety of different types of tales to enjoy.
‘The Circus Murders’ was originally published in the March 1936 issue of The Phantom Detective Magazine and is read with pulse pounding intensity by award winning voice actor Milton Bagby.
