FORGOTTEN BOOK: CIRCLE OF DEATH

 Circle of Death by James Patterson & Brian Sitts (2023)

Not so much a Forgotten Book as it is a Was This Really Necessary? Book.

Once, back in the Dark ages, I worked in a large department store when a new store manager came on board.  When the store opened on his first day on the job, there was something different.  The escalators had changed direction.  The Up escalator now went down and the Down escalator now went up.  A small difference perhaps, but it announced to the employees and the customers that something had changed.  There was a new sheriff in town and he was marking his territory.

When the Mission:  Impossible movie franchise began in 1996 with Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, the very first film revealed the big bad to be Jim Phelps, the leader of the Impossible Mission Force from the venerable television series.  It was, of course, a complete clap on the face to the franchise's predecessor and created my personal resentment to the film series that continues to this day, but it did the trick.  The blame goes to director Brian de Palma and scripters David Koepp and Robert Towne, but it did the trick -- it allowed Tom Cruise to mark his territory.  there was a new sheriff in town and his name was Ethan Hunt.

Now it's James Patterson's turn, with an assist from co-writer Brian Sitts.  As a character, the Shadow was around long before I was.  From radio to pulp magazines and novels to films to comic books, the Shadow and his most common identity as Lamont Cranston has been a somewhat definable character. Granted there are differences between how the character is portrayed in the various types of media in which he appeared, but the man of mystery and defender of justice and protector of the innocent has basically been the same person -- the one who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.  A man who, in some incarnations, was able to cloud men's minds so as to appear invisible, thus making him more capable of installing fear in the hearts of evildoers.

Then  along came Patterson and Sitts. 

Circle of Death is the second book in a new series about the Shadow, following 2021's The Shadow.  In this reimagining, the Shadow and his lover (yeah, she's his lover now) Margo Lane were poisoned in 1937.  Rather than dying, they were placed in suspended animation and, after 150 years, are revived by their great-great-great-great-granddaughter Maddy.  (A  bit more backstory here:  Margo Lane was pregnant when she went into suspended animation, although neither she now the Shadow were aware of it.  She had a baby but never knew it.  Their only living descendants in 2087 are eighteen-year-old Maddy and her grandmother Jessica.  There's more to the backstory, but 
I get to that in a bit.)

The ne'er-do-well who poisoned the Shadow and Margo was the Shadow's old enemy Shiwan Khan, once the last living descendant of Genghis Khan, but for the purposes of the reimagined series, a 10,000-year-old master for he mystics arts and would-be conqueror of the world.  the shadow, BTW, is also 10,000 years old and trained with Shiwan Khan in ancient Nepal under Dache, a powerful monk.  In the 150 years that the Shadow and Margo were on ice, Shiwan Khan had taken over American and now ran his brutal empire from Lamont Cranston's old mansion, killing the populace indiscriminately and generally doing evil stuff.

The Shadow has a bunch of mystic tricks up his sleeve, including invisibility ('natch), but also the power to shapeshift.  Maddy, having inherited some of his genes has her own powers.  She can turn invisible ('natch) but she can also control minds and shoot lightning from her hands.  And she's a pretty kickass fighter.  These are nascent powers, though, and we learn that she could be capable of doing much, much more.

At the end of the first book, Shiwan Khan is defeated and Lamont, Margo, Jessica, and Maddy go to live in Lamont's old mansion while the country slowly comes back from a century and a half of decay and corruption.

With me now?

Okay.  Circle of Death, taking place the following year, brings a new threat to the entire planet.  Someone called Destroyer of Worlds is slaughtering entire populations, starting from the Eastern Hemisphere and apparently work his hay to America.  Someone has got to stop him and that someone is the Shadow.  But he can't do it alone.  He uses his resources and discovers that descendant of some of his old helpers are alive.  In a case of co-inky-dink extreme these dudes are the exact likenesses of their ancestors and have the same skill sets.  Naturally when the Shadow calls them they answer and become loyal followers -- Jericho, a large muscular black man; Moe Shrevnitz, cabdriver extraordinaire; Burbank, an electronic genius, although much of the electronics in a decimated 2088 is primitive; Hawkeye, an underworld snoop in 1937, but a resistance fighter in 2088; and Tapper, another resistance fighter and an ally of Hawkeye.

There is also another, lower-level threat going on, a madman is killing young men and women on the grounds of the soon-to-be-opened World's Fair.  Afraid a causing a panic and of damaging the Fair itself, authorities are keeping quiet about this.  Maddy, however learns about the crimes and is incensed that the authorities are keeping them under wraps.  At the same time, Maddy's latent lesbianism is awakened just as her new lover becomes the latest victim of the World's Fair Killer.  Maddy goes after the killer and barely escapes with her life, but discovers the killer is a shapeshifter.

Lamont calls Dache from Tibet to come and train Maddy to use her undiscovered powers, including shapeshifting, stopping time, and a form of time travel to the past.

While this is going on, the president of the Americas sends Lamont and his crew to France, where the Destroyer of Worlds is assembling a powerful new weapon in an impregnable lair.  Oh, and it turns out the Destroyer of Worlds is a hot chick who has the hots for Lamont and wishes Margo dead...

There's more.  We have plot reversals and reverse reversals  and a few jumpstart surprises just because.  The entire novel is told with very broad strokes and we never get a sense of who the characters are, or even what the real motivation of the Destroyer of Worlds really is.  The cardboard characters mouth their cardboard words and the reader is not very impressed.  Perils appear out of nowhere, herky-jerky, and are dispensed with quickly.  If the Shadow's world were not ruled by coincidence after coincidence, the plot (what there is of it) would never advance.  The book has 242 pages and 104 rapid-fire chapters, plus a four-part prologue and an epilogue.

The book I reviewed last week in this spot was a "muddled mess."  Consider this "muddled mess redux."

Sadly, there will be more Shadow books from Patterson and Sitts, and there is the possibility of a film franchise (move over, Mission:  Impossible).  The pair also published a "Doc Savage" novel (The Perfect Assassin, 2022) that was just as atrocious, and threatened to be the first in a series.  This January, the pair also published Holmes, Miss Marple and Poe, presumably the start of another series; I have not read this one, so I give the benefit of doubt by using the word "Published," rather than "foisted."