With terrible swiftness, the Master of the Green Death had struck. His victims lay in the streets, verdant-hued and ghastly — and the Underworld, which he had protected against all reprisal, ran riot in a Manhattan horror-holiday of loot and murder!
For two years, Norvell Page and his understudy, Wayne Rogers, alternated on writing the Spider novels. This was after Page came back from a hiatus in the middle of 1937.
During this time, Page turned out some astonishing stories, including the infamous Black Police trilogy, while Wayne Rogers did his best to emulate the kind of fiction that appeared in Terror Tales with overheated novels like The City that Dared Not Eat and When Thousands Slept in Hell.
Then, evidently rested up enough to take full control the series for a while, Norvell Page and his new editor, Loring Dowst, inaugurated a multipart epic that began with Rule of the Monster Men, in which Nita van Sloan ended up a helpless cripple.
Wayne Rogers did return for one last story, The Corpse Broker! In this novel, victims are struck down by the mysterious malady the newspapers dub the Green Death. This is only the beginning of a daring criminal campaign to take over New York City and turn it into the national capital of crime. Taking on a new identity, Dick Wentworth rises from his secret slum hideout to take on this titanic threat to law and order.
Even at the conclusion of this story, all is not resolved. Resolution will take place in our next exciting Spider audiobook, The Spider and in the Eyeless Legion.
The Corpse Broker proved to be Wayne Rogers’ final Spider novel. It was also one of his best. Listen to it now. Nick Santa Maria brings all the Spidery thrills to life, Originally published in The Spider magazine, September, 1939.
