Edward H. Hurlbut

Edward H. Hurlbut was an American writer and journalist active in the early 20th century. Reliable catalog and library sources confirm him as the author of Lanagan, Amateur Detective (published in 1913), and he is also associated with Law and Order in San Francisco: A Beginning from 1916.

Short reference sources describe him as a San Francisco newspaperman, which fits the feel of his fiction: quick-moving, urban, and closely tuned to crime and public life. That background helps explain why his work still feels rooted in the world of reporters, police rooms, and city politics.

Very little biographical detail about his personal life is easy to confirm from strong public sources, so he remains a somewhat shadowy figure today. Even so, his surviving work offers a clear impression of a writer shaped by journalism and by San Francisco in a lively period of American newspaper history.