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!
Corpses hung aloft on the steel skeletons of skyscrapers serve as gruesome symbols of a gigantic plot of death and destruction menacing the progress of America and The Phantom Detective!
Although The Phantom Detective often faced the same sort of evil that other Pulp heroes came into contact with, there was something different about the adventures of Richard Curtis Van Loan. Multiple similarities can be drawn between The Phantom and his pulpish peers, including being a veteran of the Great War, being wealthy, and an unerring need to help others. Even with all of that, however, the concept of the masked man with the platinum domino mask as his personal badge had something others of its type did not - a certain simplicity. Van Loan, even with his unerring mission of justice, actually returned from the war as so many veterans do, looking for what was next, unsure of how to continue his life. This unsure direction surely spoke to many readers of the Detective’s stories, a lot of them either veterans themselves or, more likely, victims of the insecurity the Great Depression caused. In The Phantom Detective, however, fans found a man who not only, like them, had lost his way, but also rediscovered it and took to a new path with dedication and ferocity.
Knowing that crime was a universal concern, The Phantom Detective’s stories often led with brief passages, editorials in a way, pointing out allegedly real criminals and actual criminal actions. Each of these blurbs were essentially calls to action, summoning the reader to, like The Phantom Detective, take up the fight against crime, in completely legal ways, of course.
‘Hammers of Doom’ was originally published in the September 1937 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: Midnight Snatch
Chapter 2: A Grim List
Chapter 3: A Call to Arms
Chapter 4: Higher Than Haman
Chapter 5: Red-Hot Rivets
Chapter 6: Surprise Attack
Chapter 7: An Unfinished Record
Chapter 8: Street Attack
Chapter 9: The Woman of the Green Scarf
Chapter 10: Battle on the Girders
Chapter 11: Interrupted Vigil
Chapter 12: The Hooded “Boss”
Chapter 13: Rescue — and a Crash!
Chapter 14: Mystery Man
Chapter 15: Two Jobs
Chapter 16: At Bay
Chapter 17: Wounded Hands
Chapter 18: Three More To Die
Chapter 19: The Call of a Countryman
Chapter 20: Robert Matthews’ Prison
Chapter 21: “The Case Is Closed”
