Author: Duncan B. Forrester

1Secret Service; or, Recollections of a City Detective

By Andrew Forrester

This book of fiction from 1864, as you can guess from the title, presents a series of accounts of different cases that the “City Detective” has worked. All are enhanced by the author’s dry sense of humor. The cases include political corruption, forgery, theft, smuggling, infidelity, and more. Our detective is unnamed, writing in first person and thus known simply as “I.” - Summary by Verla Viera

This 1864 collection of stories is one of the first books featuring a female detective character. Andrew Forrester (pseudonym of James Redding Ware) presents himself as editor of these “memoirs,” though he is actually the author. Our detective is anonymous, writing only as the first person “I,” beginning the introduction with, “Who am I? It can matter little who I am.” Her reason for writing the book is to show “…that the profession to which I belong is so useful that it should not be despised.” Throughout the stories, besides the events of her cases recounted, she weaves commentaries about detective work itself. In these seven London-set stories, our detective methodically lays out her reasoning toward solutions of cases ranging from suspicious death whodunnits to identification of a bag of body parts to answering the question of whether a death even was a murder. Enjoy this entertaining example of early detective fiction! - Summary by Verla Viera