author
Police Captain Howard
Best known for fast-moving dime-novel mysteries, this late-19th-century writer published under the vivid pen name “Police Captain Howard.” His stories promise disguises, danger, and the kind of detective work that helped shape early popular crime fiction.
1 Audiobook
Shadow, the Mysterious Detective
by Police Captain Howard
About the author
Writing as Police Captain Howard, Francis Worcester Doughty was a prolific American novelist and screenwriter born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 5, 1850. He published adventure and detective fiction under several names, and Shadow, the Mysterious Detective is one of the works linked to this pseudonym.
Doughty worked in the lively world of dime novels, where quick pace and cliffhangers mattered as much as clever plotting. His career also stretched beyond print: later sources on his life connect him with early silent-film scenario writing, showing how comfortably he moved between popular storytelling forms.
He died on October 30, 1917, in Cresskill, New Jersey. Today, the name Police Captain Howard survives mainly through reprints and public-domain editions, offering modern readers a window into the energetic, serialized detective fiction of the 1880s.