EVERY MAN HIS OWN DETECTIVE!
Rare Victorian guide to the principles of detection, as practiced in British-administrated India by an investigator of the Calcutta Police Detective Department.
Very good plus.
Price: $2,500.00
EVERY MAN HIS OWN DETECTIVE!
"Detectives are 'sold' like men of all other professions, and sometimes very cheaply too."
A four-part guide to the tricks of the colonial detective trade by the onetime Superintendent of the Calcutta Detective Department – published the same year as A STUDY IN SCARLET, Arthur Conan Doyle's first Holmes story, appeared in the BEETON'S CHRISTMAS ANNUAL.
From the questionable beginnings of "Physiognomy," Reid proceeds through "Observation," "The Art of Great Crimes," and "Detective Stories, Amusing and Instructive," in each section advancing his principles of deduction via illustrative anecdotes from his own storied career. One notable crime examined in detail is the murder in 1868 of a young Anglo-Indian woman, Rose Brown, famous not only for its shocking nature but also for the investigation's early use of forensic photography and the widespread circulation of postmortem photographs to identify the victim. Reid, then a mere Police Inspector, made his name and reputation by solving the case, and dedicates a chapter to the so-called Amherst Street Mystery. His appraisal of the two major suspects turns not on speculative psychology, but on the simple and damning comparison of one man's alibi with the incompatible physical evidence. A rare and evocative book (OCLC locates just two holdings of this work) aimed at a public that was eager for stories, real and invented, of shrewd investigators ready to match their resourceful brains against violent crime.
Read more: Sumanta Banerjee, The Wicked City: Crime and Punishment in Colonial Calcutta.
The Object
Calcutta: W. Newman & Co., 1887. 7'' x 4.25''. Original brown cloth with bright gilt lettering to front board. 253, [1] pages. Bookplate on front pastedown. Foxing and traces of soil to endpapers. A single instance of marginalia to page 33. Some scuffing and wear to boards, light bumping to corners.
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