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!
The Phantom plunges into a foul swamp of mystery to rip out the fangs of crime when the King of the Everglades challenges the might of the Law in a holocaust of murder! A nation’s winter playground is stricken by a dread hurricane brewed in the sinister heart of a fiend!
The Phantom Detective, billed in his stories as the World’s Greatest Sleuth, proved that he was indeed highly skilled in all aspects of criminal investigation, as well as a master of disguise and an excellent escape artist. Never once in the entire twenty-year series did Richard Curtis Van Loan display any sort of heightened senses, ala Doc Savage, or the ability to cloud anyone’s thoughts, like The Shadow. No, The Phantom Detective, albeit wealthy and highly self-trained, was just a common man with an uncommon drive to fight crime and pursue justice. Also, most of the villains featured in the series were essentially street level hooligans, gangsters, and corrupt types. With this, the editors used The Phantom Detective as a soapbox, a platform for highly charged editorialized comments about crime and the need to combat it.
Citing actual crimes and criminals’ actions across the country, the editorial staff behind The Phantom Detective made great use of their forum. They gave their hero as many kidnappings and fraud cases as they did actual murders to solve. They also, in opening blurbs aimed to entice and even incite their readers, discussed allegedly real corruption in various cities and spotlighted crimes of all sorts, always tying it back into the reader having an obligation to fight crime in their own way, much like The Phantom Detective.
The Chain of Death was originally published in the March 1939 issue of The Phantom Detective Magazine and is read with pulse pounding intensity by award winning voice actor Milton Bagby.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Dying Declaration
Chapter 2: Call for the Phantom
Chapter 3: Death Among the Trees
Chapter 4: The Phantom Takes Hold
Chapter 5: Death Needle
Chapter 6: Grim Threat Fulfilled
Chapter 7: Snatch Evidence
Chapter 8: Todd Gets A Lead
Chapter 9: Dead Men Don’t Talk
Chapter 10: The Phantom’s Oath
Chapter 11: Breaking and Entering
Chapter 12: Cross Currents of Enmity
Chapter 13: Knife-Threat
Chapter 14: The List
Chapter 15: Over the Everglades
Chapter 16: Besieged!
Chapter 17: Everglade Hell
Chapter 18: Devil’s Rock
Chapter 19: Minutes to Go!
Chapter 20: “Duke” and Madman
Chapter 21: Greater Reward Than This...
