Our latest eBook release, produced with the help of Distributed Proofreaders, is another of Frank Tousey‘s Ten Cent Hand Books, though a rather unusual one.

Attributed to fictional detective Old King Brady, hero of the Secret Service series, How to Be a Detective consists primarily of a series of short stories designed to illustrate different aspects of detective work, with the overall moral being that you can’t learn detective work from a book, and that most people simply aren’t cut out for it. While the book does not really deliver on the promise of its title, it does serve as an interesting example of the intersection between fiction and non-fiction in the dime novel era.

The entire text of the book may be read online or downloaded through Project Gutenberg.