Beadle's Dime Library No. 840: Major Bullion, Boss of the Tigers

About this issue

This issue of Police Gazette (No. 840, Wednesday) features the serialized detective mystery "A Curious Case of Solon Shook, the Clue-Finder" by Capt. Howard Holmes. In Chapter I, "A Rainy Night's Mystery," New York policeman Coovert is summoned by street child Nelly Nappers to a tenement building called the Coop, where she claims to have found a dead man. Upon investigation, Coovert discovers a dead woman in a chair instead, with blood stains on the floor. When Coovert briefly leaves to alert authorities, both Nappers and the body vanish. Chapter II introduces three well-dressed men in a fashionable room—Spiders, an elder man with pallid features, and Jupiter, a burly newcomer—conducting mysterious business on the same night. The narrative employs detective-fiction conventions with street-level New York settings and working-class characters.