Guy Garrick, A New Detective Novel
By Arthur B. Reeve
The buzzer on his door recalled us to the case in hand.
One of our visitors was a sandy-haired, red-moustached, stocky man. From his face to his mannerisms, everything but the name detective was written on him.
He was accompanied by an athletically inclined, fresh-faced young fellow whose clothes proclaimed him practically the last word in imported goods from London.
I was not surprised to read the name James McBirney on the detective’s card, underneath which was the title of the Automobile Underwriters’ Association. But I was more than surprised when the younger visitors handed us a card named Mortimer Warrington.
Mortimer Warrington, I may say, was at that time one of the city’s celebrities, at least as far as the newspapers were concerned. He was one of the wealthiest young men in the country and suitable for a “story” almost every day.
Warrington was not precisely a wild youth, even though his name appeared so frequently in the headlines. The worst that could be said of him with any degree of truth was that he was gifted with a large inheritance of good, red, restless blood and considerable holdings of real estate in various active sections of the metropolis.
More than that, it was scarcely his fault if the society columns had been busy in a concerted effort to marry him off—no doubt with a cynical eye on possible black-type headlines of future domestic discord. Among those mentioned by the enterprising society reporters of the papers had been the same Miss Violet Winslow whose picture I had admired. Garrick had recognized the coincidence.
By the way, Miss Winslow was rather closely guarded by a duenna-like aunt, Mrs Beekman de Lancey, who had achieved a certain amount of notoriety at that time through a crusade that she had organized against gambling in society. She had reached the age when some women naturally turned toward righting humanity’s wrongs, and, in this instance, as in many others, humanity did not exactly appreciate it.
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Arthur B. Reeve
Arthur Benjamin Reeve (October 15, 1880 – August 9, 1936) was an American mystery writer.
Biography.
He is known best for creating the series character Professor Craig Kennedy, sometimes called “The American Sherlock Holmes”, and Kennedy’s Dr. Watson-like sidekick Walter Jameson, a newspaper reporter, for 18 detective novels. Reeve is primarily famous for the 82 Craig Kennedy stories, published in Cosmopolitan magazine between 1910 and 1918. These were collected in book form; with the third collection, the short stories were published and grouped as episodic novels. The 12-volume publication Craig Kennedy Stories was released in 1918; it reissued Reeve’s books-to-date as a matched set. Born in Brooklyn, Reeve graduated from Princeton and attended New York Law School. He was an editor and journalist before acquiring fame from the first Craig Kennedy story in 1911.
Raised in Brooklyn, he lived most of his professional life at various addresses near Long Island Sound. In 1932, he relocated to New Jersey (Trenton) to be nearer his alma mater, Princeton. He died in Trenton in 1936. Reeve began authoring screenplays starting with The Exploits of Elaine (1914). His movie career was the most productive during 1919-20 when he was credited for seven movies, most of them serials, three featuring Harry Houdini. After that—- probably because the movie industry migrated to Hollywood and Reeve’s desire to remain in the East—- Reeve worked more sporadically with movies. He originally published much fiction in newspapers and various magazines, including Boys’ Life, Country Gentleman, and Everybody’s Magazine. Eventually, he was published only in pulps like Detective Fiction Weekly and Detective Story Magazine. In 1927, Reeve contracted with (John S. Lopez) to write a series of movie scenarios for the notorious millionaire murderer Harry K. Thaw on fake spiritualists.
The deal resulted in a lawsuit when Thaw refused to pay. In late 1928, Reeve declared bankruptcy. During the 1930s, Reeve changed his career by becoming an anti-racket crusader. He hosted a national radio program from July 1930 to March 1931, published a history of the rackets titled The Golden Age of Crime, and the emphasis of his Craig Kennedy stories completed Reeve’s transition from “scientific detective” work to combating organized crime. During his career, Reeve reported many celebrated crime cases for various newspapers, including the murder of William Desmond Taylor in 1922 and the trial of Lindbergh’s baby kidnapper, Bruno Hauptmann, who was executed in 1936.
Arthur B. Reeve
