coolreads# The Shadow

The Shadow
Authors: James Patterson & Brian Sitts
Publisher: Arrow Books
ISBN: 9781787467736

James Patterson’s latest novel, The Shadow, written in collaboration with Brian Sitts, is a dystopian science-fiction with elements of both the Marvel and DC comics universes.  The book opens in a diner set in 1937, featuring Lamont Cranston and Margo Lane. The aloof Lamont is about to ask Margo to marry him. And Margo has a bigger surprise - her implied secret pregnancy. Unfortunately, before they can reveal the secrets to each other, the pair are being poisoned. Lamont manages to drive them across town to a secret warehouse/laboratory he owned. 

Then 150 years later, the story features Maddy, now 18, living in a world where the privileged elites have it all while the rest of the population is left to live in decaying slums and kept in their place by armoured police. 

One day, Maddy gets a letter from a lawyer, saying she has received an inheritance. Thinking it a windfall she can share with her grandma who raises her, she hurries to Creighton Poole’s office. 

Instead, under the influence of Maddy’s mind control power (she discovers she has it), Poole sends her to an abandoned warehouse near the docks to pick up the inheritance. It turns out to be a man - Lamont Cranston - whose body had been preserved since the night he was poisoned but kept alive by a machine. 

Maddy, together with Dr Julian Fletcher, the caretaker who is also a chemist, successfully revived Lamont from his deep sleep state.

Lamont then insists on being taken to his Manhattan mansion, hoping he will find Margo there. Instead, the mansion is now the fortress residence of the World President, a dictator who happens to be The Shadow’s ancient enemy, Shiwan Khan. He was the one who had poisoned Margo and Lamont back in 1937. 

Meanwhile, Maddy is quite familiar with The Shadow and Lamont Cranston from her collection of bootleg pulp magazines and old-time radio shows. Initially, she thinks this crazy person whom she has inherited just takes on the name of her hero. To save time in convincing her, Lamont uses his mind power to imprint his entire backstory directly into Maddy’s consciousness. 

Together, they then return to the warehouse and find Margo in another storeroom, also in deep sleep. Once Margo is revived, she too, has magical powers, but not as potent as Lamont, who can become invisible at will. During the big fight scene, Lamont and Maddy can shoot lightning from their hands fighting Khan.

Khan, too, has that ability and in one scene, he uses it to destroy the building Lamont, Margo, and Maddy have just left, seemingly killing Maddy’s grandmother. As the story develops, they are all linked as a family. By the time we find out that Maddy is Margo’s great-great-great-great-granddaughter, it’s anticlimactic. 

More climactic, however, is the exciting, action-filled finale. Here, Lamont (and Maddy) and Khan, now dethroned and thwarted, engage in a thrilling, shape-shifting, energy-tossing, fight in what was once Times Square. Despite the many unexplained coincidences and holes, it is still an interesting read.