Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 452

About this issue

This 1886 Beadle and Adams dime novel serializes "Hotspur Bob, the Street Boy Detective" by J.O. Pierce, author of detective fiction. Chapter I introduces Andrew Wellburn, a sixty-year-old bank cashier whose household is in turmoil. His twenty-one-year-old son Edward defies him regarding Olive Pray, a young woman Wellburn wants removed from the house—he suspects her of theft. Edward announces his betrothal to her. The conflict escalates when Wellburn's second wife, whom he suspects of stealing household items, confronts him and blackmails him into compliance, revealing she knows he has embezzled from the Bonanza Savings Bank. Wellburn has a younger, gentler son Willis, his "light of life," whose existence adds to his misery. Chapter II shifts to the title character, a sixteen-year-old street boy on Grand Street, New York, observing the urban underworld of thieves and pickpockets. The narrative follows his observations of two suspicious men emerging from a doorway.