Detective Story Magazine, August 27, 1921

About this issue

This issue opens with "Warren Bigelow, the Finger Print Detective," a brief crime story establishing the protagonist's deductive abilities: Bigelow identifies "Big Joe" Moran, a safe-blower, through fingerprint evidence recovered from a mahogany table at a T—— O—— Company robbery ($6,500 in payroll), earning a $500 reward for two hours' work. The story serves as promotional material for the University of Applied Science's fingerprint detective correspondence course. The main serialized content includes part one of "The Unknown Seven" by Harry Coverdale, in which detective-scholar Kingdon Cole encounters a mysterious woman in a limousine who reveals extensive knowledge of his background and his current investigation into Malcolm Reeves' disappearance from the house of Professor Carmody on Bleecker Street. The issue also contains six short detective stories and departments on handwriting analysis and missing persons, alongside miscellaneous crime notes.