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, nemesis of the lawless, hurls courage and skill against the devilish ingenuity of a master criminal — battling mysterious henchmen of evil who turn men into skeletons overnight! Follow the amazing exploits of Richard Curtis Van Loan as he strives to solve one of the most baffling crime riddles of all time!
Although other characters had multiple writers, there may be reasons that so many contributed to The Phantom Detective. It is well known that multiple stories within the Phantom Detective series were originally intended for other characters but were rewritten into Phantom Detective entries. The number of authors for this series relates to its longevity and the fact that The Phantom Detective was more or less a straightforward lawman, albeit in a mask. Other Pulp heroes took on lost races, psychotic madmen with plots to litter the streets of New York with thousands of bodies, or mysterious monsters and insane mad scientists. The Phantom Detective, often, steered clear of such outlandish threats and focused more specifically on street level crimes, be it actual crimes against citizens or massive underworld plots to rob the world blind. This more realistic take on a Pulp hero made the character easier for multiple authors to either write stories from beginning to end, or to take tales they were already writing and rework them into Phantom Detective adventures. Even some of the wilder stories in the series seemed to benefit from the simplicity behind the basic concept. The accessibility of the series made sure that Phantom Detective fans had 170 stories to read from a fantastic variety of authors.
The Phantom’s Murder Trail was originally published in the March 1940 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: Kidnapped
Chapter 2: Hail of Leaden Death
Chapter 3: Kidnapped for Ransom
Chapter 4: The Skeleton with the Mutilated Foot
Chapter 5: The Girl in the Lamplight
Chapter 6: Ironic Headline
Chapter 7: A Friend Vanishes
Chapter 8: What the Skeleton Hid
Chapter 9: What the Skeleton Revealed
Chapter 10: A Name Appears
Chapter 11: Graveyard Rendezvous
Chapter 12: The Unnamed Leader
Chapter 13: The Man with the Lame Foot
Chapter 14: Trip to Bermuda
Chapter 15: The Signal from the Reefs
Chapter 16: The Flight on the Runaway Engine
Chapter 17: The Wreck
Chapter 18: The Girl Prowler Again
Chapter 19: Face to Face
Chapter 20: The Fight in the Grotto
Chapter 21: The Secret of the Skeletons
