How do you catch a thief when your best tools are patience, disguise, and a memory for faces?

In Fifty Years a Detective, Thomas Furlong takes you into the working world of a St. Louis railroad detective. Across the American West and Midwest, trains carry passengers, mail, money, and freight through thinly policed country. For thieves and swindlers, those routes offer targets. For Furlong, they mean crimes to investigate and people to pursue.

His memoir gathers thirty-five real cases in short, plain accounts, from theft and fraud to violent robbery. This is detective work before modern laboratories and databases: watching, talking, cultivating informers, and waiting. Alongside the pursuit, Furlong reveals his firm view of justice, the harm crime causes, and the detective’s duty to catch the guilty.

이 책에서 발견할 것들

• Crime along the rails Explore a world where the routes of trade and travel also draw thieves.
• Patience as a tool See how watching, conversation, disguise, and memory serve an investigator without modern forensic tools.
• A pursuit in every case Follow separate accounts of wrongdoing, each with its own crime and its own pursuit.
• A lawman’s sense of duty Encounter Furlong’s belief that catching criminals protects ordinary people and honest businesses.
• Policing beyond public authorities Discover how private detective agencies work alongside public authorities in the railroad age.

이런 분들이 좋아할 거예요

실제 범죄 이야기, 철도와 개척지의 역사, 교묘한 변장, 법정 드라마를 좋아하는 독자를 위한 책이에요. 범인을 어떻게 잡았는지 직접 설명해 주는 수사관을 좋아하는 독자에게도 잘 맞아요.