12 h 28 minAudiobook13 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 12 h 28 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
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.
What you’ll discover
- 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.
Who will love it
This is for readers who love true crime, railroad and frontier history, clever disguises, courtroom drama, and an investigator who explains how he caught his man.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Detective work begins with a performance
- Character matters as much as disguise
- A false identity opens the cell
- Letters reveal a hidden suspect
- Local law comes before confident orders
- A family resemblance becomes a lead
- An invented brother wins private trust
- Quiet clues can replace force
- Responsibility holds the methods together
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Fifty Years a Detective
by Thomas Furlong · 1912
A railroad detective takes a punch in the mud to get a murderer talking in the St. Louis jail.
Medium level5–10 hours to read16 languages
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In short
What would you do to make a murderer talk? Thomas Furlong has his clerk prepare a false check, then asks his operative to punch him in a muddy St. Louis street so the operative can be jailed beside a killer.
Fifty Years a Detective at a glance
- Reading time
- About 6 h 50 min5 h 25 min fast, 8 h 5 min slow
- Length
- 97,400 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1912by Thomas Furlong
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Good detectives are born with certain traits
Furlong begins by defending his trade. Every profession has its parasites, he says, from crooked lawyers to bankers who break the law. Yet the public assumes all detectives are thugs, because a few sell family secrets.
His answer is that successful detectives are born, not made. He asks for a man who is honest, sober, truthful and always a gentleman. Above all he must be an actor who plays any part naturally, since overacting draws the very attention he wants to avoid.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 13 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1912
- Language
- English
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Furlong, Thomas. Fifty Years a Detective. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/fifty-years-a-detective.
Furlong, T. (2026). Fifty years a detective. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/fifty-years-a-detective (Original work published 1912)
Furlong, Thomas. Fifty Years a Detective. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/fifty-years-a-detective.
@book{furlong2026fifty,
author = {Furlong, Thomas},
title = {Fifty Years a Detective},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/fifty-years-a-detective},
note = {First published 1912}
}
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What is Fifty Years a Detective about?
It is Thomas Furlong's account of real cases from his career as a railroad and private detective. He tells how murders, swindles, train robberies, forgeries and riots were solved, and he explains the tricks, disguises and reasoning used.
Is Fifty Years a Detective a true story?
Yes, Furlong presents it as fact, built from real cases he handled and supported by court records. He changes or hides some names of people who later lived honest lives, and he says he adds no embellishment.
Who was Thomas Furlong?
He was an American detective who started in 1862. He served as chief of police in Oil City, Pennsylvania, headed security for the Gould railroad system and later ran a private detective agency in St. Louis.
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