A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1887 — all 16 pages of painted-cover fiction magazines that launched science fiction, horror, and hardboiled crime, free to page through at ComicBooks.com.

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A complete issue · 16 pages · 1887

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 543

1887 · Free to read

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About this issue

This issue of Beadle and Adams (December 20, 1887) features the serialized detective story "The Rival Boy Detectives" by T.C. Harbaugh, author of multiple dime-novel series. The narrative introduces Dodger Dick, a famous "wharf-rat detective" of New York, who reads of a $5,000 reward for robbers who burglarized retired broker Norris Gibbs. Masked thieves stole funds and documents affecting Gibbs's ward, Lucy Lukens. When Dick visits Gibbs's house, the broker dismisses him angrily, claiming Dick had already visited at noon. Dick realizes someone resembles him physically—a mysterious double also investigating the case. The story continues with Chubb Copeland, Gibbs's shrewd lawyer, receiving an unexpected visit from a large man named Foxcraft who questions him about papers Gibbs held in trust for Miss Lukens's eighteenth birthday.

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