Gideon Drexel's Millions by Nicholas Carter

This is a catalog for the New Magnet Library, issue featuring detective stories by Nicholas Carter, a prolific popular author of the era. The publication, dated May 1919 and priced at 20 cents, is part of a semimonthly series promoting itself as "masterpieces of detective literature." The catalog lists over 100 Nicholas Carter titles in print (issues 900-1010), with upcoming releases through September 1919. The featured story in this issue is Gideon Drexel's Millions; or, A Willing Fool. The narrative begins when a wealthy importer, Gideon Drexel, contacts famous detective Nick Carter through the superintendent of police to investigate his five-year-old daughter's abduction from his country estate, Maplewood, the previous night. Carter methodically questions Drexel about his family—a second wife, stepdaughter Dolly Meredith (nineteen), and hints of complications from his first marriage involving other children. The story exemplifies the era's detective fiction convention of piecing together family background to uncover motive.