This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice.
A pioneering golden-age scientific detective collection from Arthur B. Reeve, featuring the iconic criminologist Craig Kennedy — the real-life inspiration for later forensic science sleuths across media.
Set in early 1910s New York, Kennedy solves twelve seemingly impossible cases using the cutting-edge laboratory methods of his era, long before modern forensic science became standard police procedure. A Wall Street broker is shot dead in a crowded, open-plan office with no audible shot, no smoke, and no weapon found anywhere — a 'silent bullet' fired through an early gun silencer. A steel magnate's safe is drilled open without leaving a single fingerprint, thanks to liquid rubber painted directly on the burglar's fingers. A string of typhoid deaths across a country estate turns out to be deliberate germ warfare. A gambler wins every spin of a high-stakes roulette table, controlled remotely by hidden electromagnets beneath the floorboards. A wealthy man wakes from mescal intoxication to find his signature has been forged to steal half a million dollars. A three-inch thick steel vault door is sliced open with an oxy-acetylene torch in the middle of a locked police stakeout.
Narrated by Kennedy's loyal sidekick Walter Jameson, a star newspaper reporter, these fast-paced, ingenious mysteries blend detective storytelling with the dawn of scientific crime detection — fingerprints, tire track comparison, lie detector reaction tests, microphotography of paper fibres, ballistics fabric mark analysis, and electrical surveillance — all rendered with period-authentic detail and tight, suspenseful plotting.