When fearsome death stalks Thunder Cave, the Phantom Detective goes on a perilous manhunt with only one slender clue serving as his guide!
It is not unusual for experts and fans to draw comparisons between Pulp heroes and characters that followed them. Entire essays have been written and countless arguments have ignited over just how much various comic and movie heroes actually owe to Pulp magazines. With the Phantom Detective, however, the comparisons between Ned Pines’ master sleuth and another, much more popular masked detective are hard to deny. It would be difficult for anyone to say that Batman did not at least owe a bit of debt to The Phantom Detective. Although not in the same manner, both Richard Curtis Van Loan and Bruce Wayne were orphans and both men born to wealth. Also, both characters underwent vigorous training in various skills. Both were skilled fighters, masters of disguise and escape, and of course each held a claim to being the world’s greatest detective. The Phantom Detective also maintained a crime laboratory, keeping it a secret, like Batman’s Batcave. Above all else the greatest evidence that The Phantom Detective contributed to the development of Batman rests in the fact that The Phantom’s friend, publisher Frank Havens, had a red flashing light installed atop his newspaper building to use as a signal to summon his masked friend. This, obviously, predates Batman’s own Bat Signal, but even more glaring is the fact that two men responsible for editing Batman at his earliest stages of development had previously been editors on a particular Pulp magazine-The Phantom Detective!
‘The Timber Tract Murders’ was originally published in the July 1948 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: Shape of Shadow
Chapter 2: Big Woods
Chapter 3: In The Night
Chapter 4: Enter — The Phantom
Chapter 5: “Frenchy Pete”
Chapter 6: Thunder Cave
Chapter 7: New Arrival
Chapter 8: Tampered With
Chapter 9: New Clues
Chapter 10: Steve Has News
Chapter 11: Too Late
Chapter 12: Cabin In The Woods
Chapter 13: Sold
Chapter 14: Tweed Calls
Chapter 15: Six O’clock Deadline
Chapter 16: Dreamland And Return
Chapter 17: Death Order
Chapter 18: Ghoul
Chapter 19: Unmasked
