Detective Fiction

Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884), a Scotsman by birth and a barrel-maker by trade, settled in Chicago in its infancy and founded the Pinkertons, the world’s first detective agency. Though events associated with the agency after his death have tarnished the name, Pinkerton himself was one of the original human rights advocates. He was a dear friend to John Brown, an advisor to Abraham Lincoln, and 80 years ahead of his time in hiring female detectives. He was also stubborn, irascible, and an egomaniac. The Expressman and the Detective (1874) is Pinkerton’s first attempt at putting his real-life experiences into novel form. Though many later works attributed to Pinkerton are understood to have been ghostwritten, this is the work of the man the London Times calls “a man at once deeply admirable and quite obnoxious.” (Summary by Pete Williams)

A contemporary of Arthur Conan Doyle, Maurice Leblanc (1864-1941) was the creator of the character of gentleman thief Ars?ne Lupin who, in France, has enjoyed a popularity as long-lasting and considerable as Sherlock Holmes in the English-speaking world. This is the delightful first of twenty volumes in the Ars?ne Lupin series written by Leblanc himself. In an unprecedented act of literary pastiche and cross-over, Sherlock Holmes and Lupin actually meet, briefly in this first volume, and more substantially in the next. But after legal objections from Conan Doyle, the name was changed to “Herlock Sholmes.” (adapted from Wikipedia by a.r.dobbs)

The Eye of Osiris is an early example from the Dr. Thorndyke series of detective stories written by R. Austin Freeman. In these stories, the author drew on his extensive medical and scientific knowledge for his main character, a medico-legal expert who relies on forensic evidence and logical deduction in solving cases. In this case, Thorndyke steps in to investigate the disappearance of one John Bellingham, an English gentleman and amateur Egyptologist, who has vanished under very mysterious circumstances. Thorndyke’s involvement in the case arises from a both purely professional interest in the unique character of the case, as well as from the fact that a young doctor and former student of his has recently become closely acquainted with the missing man’s brother and niece. (summary by J.M. Smallheer)