On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles, the actor and director, presented an adaptation of the classic novel
War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells on his Halloween episode of the CBS radio series
The Mercury Theatre on the Air. The episode is famous for inciting a panic by convincing some members of the listening audience that a Martian invasion was taking place. The broadcast was changed from the original story and set in New Jersey using a "breaking news" style of storytelling where a music program was interrupted by bogus news alerts about a Martian invasion. Because many listeners didn't tune in at the start of the program, they were convinced this was an actual live broadcast and that we were being invaded by Martians!
Max Allan Collins used this as his basis for his novel THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER. This is the sixth in his series of books that use actual historical events which interweave a murder into the story using an historical character involved in the story. I've read two of his other books in this series,
THE LUSITANIA MURDERS and
THE PEARL HARBOR MURDERS which I enjoyed very much. Collins is excellent at combining a good murder mystery with actual historical events that he spends a lot of time researching.
In War of the Worlds Murder, Collins starts the story with his meeting with Walter Gibson, the author of
The Shadow pulp novels from the 1930s and 40s that were the basis for The Shadow radio program that originally featured Orson Welles as The Shadow. Gibson goes on to tell Collins that he was present with Welles during the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938 and that there was also a murder involved in the story. The book goes on to tell the story of the days before and during the War of the Worlds broadcast. Collins did a great job as usual in his research and tells of the collaboration between Welles and his team at CBS including John Houseman and others. And then he goes on to describe the broadcast and the panic it created in different locales, especially in rural New Jersey where the attack was supposedly taking place. And while this was all going on, Gibson was on the trail of murderer at the studio.
I really enjoyed this one. I first heard about Welles broadcast and the panic it created from reading an article about it in the back of an old War of the Worlds comic book. I am also a fan of pulp novels including The Shadow and I have actually listened to a few of the old radio broadcasts of the show with Orson Welles.
I'm also a fan of Welles and his movies. Many consider his
Citizen Kane as the best movie of all time. His collaborator, John Houseman went on to star in later life in the movie and TV series,
The Paper Chase, another favorite of mine. So overall, this one really hit on a lot of my likes. After reading this, I also found and listened to the
original radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds on Youtube. It was good fun and I could see how this could cause a panic if you listened to it without knowing the context. I'll be looking forward to reading more of Collins disaster series.
