of Sherlock Holmes became a monumental success, authors and publishers alike strove to find their ways into what was evidently about to become a huge market. In the United States, Arthur Benjamin Reeve (1880–1936) became the bestselling mystery writer in the country when he created Craig Kennedy, identified as “the scientific detective.” The success of the stories and novels was enhanced by a series of silent film serials about a young heroine named Elaine who constantly finds herself in the clutches of villains, only to be rescued at the last moment by Kennedy.
Reeve is not much read today because the pseudoscientific methods and devices that were of great interest then are utterly outmoded today and most never had a solid technical basis in the first place. Still, he did apply Freudian technology to detection two decades before psychoanalysis gained substantial public acceptance. During World War I he was asked to help establish a spy and crime detection laboratory in Washington, DC.
Only four of Reeve’s books did not involve Kennedy, one of which was Constance Dunlap, Woman Detective (1916), a collection of stories in which the highly intelligent and gritty protagonist becomes involved in a wide range of adventures. In “The Forgers,” the first story in the book, she and her husband engage in a complex criminal plan that has unintended consequences.
“The Forgers” was first published in Constance Dunlap, Woman Detective (New York, Hearst’s International Library Co., 1916).