author
William J. Burns
1861–1932
A celebrated private investigator once dubbed “America’s Sherlock Holmes,” he built a national detective agency and later led the federal Bureau of Investigation, the forerunner of the FBI. His career placed him at the center of some of the most talked-about criminal investigations of the early 1900s.
1 Audiobook
The Crevice
by William J. Burns, Isabel Ostrander
About the author
Born in Baltimore in 1861, William J. Burns started out in very ordinary work before moving into government service and detective work. He became widely known as a resourceful investigator and eventually founded the William J. Burns Detective Agency, which helped make his name famous across the United States.
Burns worked on several major cases that drew intense public attention, including the investigation of the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing. His reputation for solving difficult cases earned him the nickname “America’s Sherlock Holmes,” a title that captured how strongly the public connected him with the emerging world of modern detectives.
From 1921 to 1924, he served as director of the Bureau of Investigation, the agency that later became the FBI. After leaving government service, he continued writing detective and mystery stories based on his long career, and he died in Florida in 1932.