In this High Victorian detective novel, Dyke Darrel investigates the robbery of the Central Railroad’s midnight express, during which Dyke’s friend Arnold Nicholson, a messenger, was murdered. He is helped by his sister Nell, with whom he was supposed to go on holiday. Dyke Darrell turns 'the Gotham of the North' - as he calls Chicago - upside down in search of the culprit. On the way he encounters old ennemies, kidnappers and masquerades, as he tries to solve 'the most audacious crime of my remembrance.'
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Allan Frank Pinkerton was the son of Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884), the Scottish-American spy, detective and founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which rose to fame in the mid-19th century. Inspired by his father work and the agency’s archives, A. Frank — like many other authors at the time — created highly sensationalised and popular novels based on the Pinkerton cases.