Crime stalks the shadowed byways until the Phantom Detective, world’s greatest sleuth, lights a path for justice and understanding! Fate holds the strings when teen-agers are the puppets in a spectacle of lawlessness!
His identity known to only one person, this masked enemy of crime is a product of the cataclysmic World War. Born wealthy beyond all avarice, the war made playboy Richard Curtis Van Loan realize the futility of his pampered life. Daily facing death on the flaming Eastern Front, peace-time activities seemed too tame for him after his high-flying career as a war pilot was over. Others, seeking readjustment vainly, took to other fields — many, to crime. Van Loan instead dedicated himself to fighting the criminal forces that sought to hold America in their grip.
Unlike his fictional peers, The Phantom Detective did not engage mad scientists, monsters, and supernatural forces bent on evil. Staying fairly true to his debut in The Emperor of Death, Richard Curtis Van Loan saw his mission as taking on criminals head on, but not usually the fantastic foes that Doc Savage, The Shadow and others faced. The Phantom Detective spent twenty years fighting crime at its most basic, on the streets and in the back alleys, on the docks and in skyscrapers riddled with corruption. Using skills he learned on his own, Van Loan took on gangsters, murderers, and other vile types who sought to rob common citizens of their money, their safety, their lives. In his entire 170 issue run, The Phantom Detective only faced one foe, Clifford Boniface, twice. The Phantom Detective was hell bent on keeping everyday citizens alive.
The City of Dreadful Night was originally published in the Spring 1949 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: Murder at High Speed
Chapter 2: The Young in Crime
Chapter 3: The Figures of Crime
Chapter 4: Redhead in Blue
Chapter 5: Corpse Behind Bars
Chapter 6: Wanted for Murder
Chapter 7: Siege
Chapter 8: Farmhouse Mystery
Chapter 9: Dangerous Plans
Chapter 10: Man Afraid
Chapter 11: Tip-Off
Chapter 12: The Loot and the Flame
Chapter 13: Benefit Performance
Chapter 14: Fast Company
Chapter 15: Trail East
Chapter 16: Murder Guns
Chapter 17: Paid in Poison
Chapter 18: Murder Ride
Chapter 19: Three Men of Murder
Chapter 20: The Big Job
