author
George S. McWatters
A 19th-century writer and New York City police officer, he brought readers inside the world of detectives, crime, and urban life. His best-known work mixes sensational storytelling with firsthand knowledge of policing in America.
1 Audiobook
Knots Untied; Or, Ways and By-ways in the Hidden Life of American Detectives
by George S. McWatters
About the author
George S. McWatters was a 19th-century American author best known for Knots Untied; Or, Ways and By-ways in the Hidden Life of American Detectives. Contemporary and bibliographic records also identify him as a New York City police officer, which helps explain the book's strong interest in detective work, crime, and the hidden corners of city life.
His writing belongs to an era when memoir, journalism, and popular crime writing often blended together. In addition to Knots Untied, he is associated with Detectives of Europe and America; or, Life in the Secret Service, showing a lasting focus on police methods and sensational true-crime style narratives.
McWatters is also remembered in literary and historical archives connected with New York's bohemian and publishing circles of the 1800s. Today, he is mainly read for the vivid window he offers into how crime, policing, and public fascination with detectives were imagined in the late nineteenth century.