Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 670

# Catalog Note: The Lightweight Detective: Old Blazes, the Sovereign of the Rocks

This installment features the opening chapters of a serial by Albert W. Aiken. "A Daring Deed" depicts a dramatic fire rescue in New York's Turtle Bay district when a young girl becomes trapped on the roof of a burning wooden building. A skilled, resourceful young man named Strong climbs a telegraph pole and constructs a makeshift scantling bridge to reach her, earning the crowd's nickname "Lightweight." The girl vanishes mysteriously after rescue. In "Bookingham's Proposal," the elderly property owner reveals he locked the building that very afternoon—making the girl's presence unexplained. Bookingham, a prosperous merchant, offers Strong employment as his personal investigator, believing the fire was sabotage by a secret enemy and that the mysterious girl holds the key to identifying the perpetrator. Strong accepts, having returned to New York from foreign adventure with some modest means and a temperament ill-suited to ordinary life.