Beginning his career in the nineteenth century as a writer for newspapers in his native Illinois, Frederick Irving Anderson became widely known for his creation of two of the most compelling criminal rogues in early twentieth-century American detective fiction: the Infallible Godahl and the alluring but elusive Sophie Lang. These lawbreakers were featured in two volumes of crime stories, Adventures of the Infallible Godahl (1914) and The Notorious Sophie Lang (1925). Readers were also gripped by the antagonists of these criminals: Deputy Parr of the New York City detective police force; his subordinates, the handsome lady-killer Morel and the shabby, beggar-like Pelts; and his great cohort Oliver Armiston, a former author of crime fiction.

Anderson's literary creations spring from mainstream nineteenth-century fiction. His Godahl and Sophie descend from the confidence men and women of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain although they revel in their abilities...