Who Knows What Hackery Ruins Great Characters? James Patterson Knows.

 

This disgusts me. Not only because of the so-called "author" who purchased the rights to arguably the greatest pulp era character in literary history, but also because Patterson doesn't even write the material bearing his ubiquitous name.

Oh, you didn't know that? It's surprising to me how many don't, including some librarians I have worked with in the past. That's right, kids. James Patterson is a brand name under which hungry writers toil  so he can appear as if he is the most prolific author of all time. Click here if you doubt me.

There are other authors whose names appear on books on a monthly basis. Nora Roberts a.k.a "J.D. Robb", Debbie Macomber, and Laura Snelling come to mind. There are also authors who haven't let a pesky little obstacle such as death keep them from cranking out book after book. Agatha Christie ain't goin' out like that and neither is V.C. Andrews, both of whom have been dead for a long time and still meet their, ahem, deadlines.

The quasi-con of publishing dead authors who didn't actually write the material being published has been going on for a long time. Unfortunately, so has the one involving writers who only wrote a few of their own books before hiring a virtual sweatshop of aspiring writers to do all the work under that person's pen name. Mack Bolan author Don Pendleton did it. So did Oprah's least favorite author/franchise  runner James Frey. So, Patterson certainly isn't an original in this regard. Actually, he's not an original in any sense.

For those unfamiliar with the Shadow character and its history, he is, quite simply, the superhero archetype. As a pulp era hero, he dealt with more grounded situations such as murderers, spies and the occasional misguided scientist. The radio dramas were hugely successful and, in my opinion, the ones where the character was portrayed by Orson Welles were among the best spoken word drama ever made. Without the shadow, there would be no Batman. 

The Shadow's two most famous sayings, "Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? The Shadow knows" and "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit" could be seen as templates for nearly every costumed hero's philosophy over the past nearly one-hundred years. He is a character firmly rooted in the Depression era, steeped in noir-ish grandeur and filled with the charm of a more innocent but still very dangerous time. 

A brief perusal of the plot of this Patterson-endorsed Shadow reveals a ridiculously insipid tale of time travel and a character with super powers that were never in his box of tricks. The publisher disagrees with that, of course, as evidenced by this gem of a quote:

“James Patterson is the all-time master of the American thriller genre,” said Markus Grindel, Managing Director, Global Brand Licensing, Condé Nast. “The origins of that genre began with The Shadow stories of New York’s golden age. There’s a natural creative match at work here along with a significant through-line.”

If you want quality Shadow storytelling, look no further than the graphic novels published by Dynamite Entertainment. The writers over there understand the character and aren't trying to shoehorn him into idiocy for the sake of their own egos.