[Gutenberg 11989] • The Crime of the French Café and Other Stories

Nicholas Carter is the name of a popular fictional detective, who first appeared in a dime novel entitled The Old Detective’s Pupil; or, The Mysterious Crime of Madison Square in 1886. Publishers Street & Smith of New York published over 1,000 Nicholas Carter books, none of which carried author credits, although it is known that the first was by John R. Coryell, and many of the earliest volumes were by Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey, Thomas C. Harbaugh and Eugene T. Sawyer. The Nicholas Carter name was treated as a pseudonym, and many volumes were written in the first person. Novels featuring Carter continued to appear through the 1950s, by which time there was also a popular radio show, Nick Carter, Master Detective.