The Somnambulist and the Detective The Murderer and the Fortune Teller

Allan PinkertonProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
347K words
Chapters
35

Tags

English Originals Mystery and Suspense Suspense ThrillerDetective PursuitFortune SchemePsychological InsightCriminal PsychologyDetective StoriesCase Records

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Somnambulist and the Detective; The Murderer and the Fortune TellerAuthor: Pinkerton, Allan, 1819-1884,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Dec 9, 2009

Editor's review

This book comes from the hand of Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and includes two works, The Somnambulist and the Detective and The Murderer and the Fortune Teller; it is a public-domain eBook from Project Gutenberg. Its appeal lies not in a tightly constructed puzzle plot but in the author's practitioner's voice as he recounts cases: it offers the detailed perspective of an agency man, mixed with 19th-century American imaginings about crime, hypnotic somnambulism, fortune-telling, and imposture. For Chinese readers, it serves as a sample for understanding how early detective narrative and true-crime writing intertwined, and how the public came to perceive the profession of "detective" around the rise of modern detective fiction. It is best read as a period-marked, documentary-style popular work, with attention to its distinctly 19th-century judgments about the causes of crime, superstition, and personality; it should not be cited as modern forensic science or psychology. Suitable for readers interested in the origins of detective literature, the history of crime narrative, and public-domain English-language reading.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the two works separately, noting each case's thread and the author's judgments.
  2. Pay attention to how somnambulism and fortune-telling are handled, distinguishing narrative dramatization from factual description.
  3. Read alongside histories of detective fiction to understand its textual position.
  4. Mark rather than skip passages with obvious period prejudice, so you can return to analyze them.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35

FAQ

Is this book a fictional detective novel or a record of real cases? It is closer to popular documentary-style narrative told from a practitioner's perspective, mixing case accounts with period imagination; it is not a modern fictional detective novel, nor is it equivalent to a rigorously verified case file. Read it as a textual sample of 19th-century detective narrative, not as a reliable historical dossier.
How does Pinkerton's identity affect the reading? Pinkerton was the founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and this identity gives the narrative a clear professional stance and a self-justifying tone. Readers can note how he describes detective methods and evaluates criminals and social marginals; these passages often reflect the attitudes of his era and the agency's self-image.
The book involves somnambulism and fortune-telling; is this supernatural content? These elements are handled in the context of crime and imposture, reflecting 19th-century public imagination and wariness about somnambulism, hypnotic states, and fortune-tellers rather than promoting supernatural forces. Read them as material on period attitudes, not as scientific or psychological conclusions.

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About the author

Allan Pinkerton Author · Scottish-born American · 1819–1884

Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884) was a Scottish-born American detective and the founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Born in Glasgow, he emigrated to the United States in 1842 and settled in Chicago. In his investigative work he solved numerous train robberies and counterfeit-money cases; in 1861 he foiled an assassination plot against President-elect Lincoln, and during the Civil War he engaged in intelligence work for the Union. Pinkerton is also known for his detective fiction. Seven of his works are included here, among them The Spy of the Rebellion, The Expressman and the Detective, The Somnambulist and the Detective, The Burglar's Fate, and The Detectives, Mississippi Outlaws and the Detectives, Bucholz and the Detectives, and The Spiritualists and the Detectives. Drawing largely on his own cases, these works are tightly plotted and attentive to investigative detail, combining reportage with popular fiction and exerting a certain influence on later detective literature.