Thomas Furlong

Born in 1844 and dying in 1918, he is remembered less as a literary figure than as a working detective who later turned his career into lively true-crime storytelling. Public-domain editions of Fifty Years a Detective identify him as the former chief of the secret service for the Missouri Pacific Railway, connected with the Gould system, as well as the Allegheny Valley Railway, and as the first chief of police of Oil City, Pennsylvania.

Sources available online also describe him as a Union veteran of the Civil War, with his detective career beginning during his military service in the 1860s. Later accounts credit him with founding the Furlong Secret Service Company and building a strong reputation for tracking criminals and protecting railroads and businesses.

His writing has an easy, direct quality shaped by experience rather than polish. In Fifty Years a Detective, he presents dozens of “real detective stories,” giving readers a vivid look at crime, investigation, and law enforcement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.