This book is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS series. The creators of this series are united by passion for literature and driven by the intention of making all public domain books available in printed format again - worldwide. At tredition we believe that a great book never goes out of style. Several mostly non-profit literature projects provide content to tredition. To support their good work, tredition donates a portion of the proceeds from each sold copy. As a reader of a TREDITION CLASSICS book, you support our mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion.
Arthur Benjamin Reeve (October 15, 1880 - August 9, 1936) was an American mystery writer. He is best known for creating the series character Professor Craig Kennedy, sometimes called "The American Sherlock Holmes", and Kennedy's Dr. Watson-like sidekick Walter Jameson, a newspaper reporter, in 18 detective novels. The bulk of Reeve's fame is based on the 82 Craig Kennedy stories, published in Cosmopolitan magazine between 1910 and 1918. These were collected in book form; with the third collection, the short stories were stitched together into pseudo-novels. The 12-volume Craig Kennedy Stories were released in 1918; it reissued Reeve's books-to-date as a matched set.
Yes, I read this one right after The Exploits of Elaine because of Craig Kennedy's romance with Elaine. I wanted to see what new trials the overly ambitious author would put them through. This set of adventures was even worse than the previous one. Any person with average intelligence would have realized things that Jameson and even Elaine failed to perceive. They were good friends with the main villain without any doubts about him and they never let themselves guess who their guardian angel was when Kennedy left them on their own for a bit. The suspense was good though and overall, I enjoyed reading about both -Elaine's exploits and romance .
What otherwise would be just a silly melodramatic "Perils of Pauline" type story is saved (for me) by the introduction of inventions that came to fruition many, many years later. This book was published in 1916 and included two "inventions" that stood out above the others mentioned. Of course, those inventions were merely dreams in 1916! One was the wireless remote-controlled torpedo and the other was the fax machine. Reeve's books were full of such innovations and it's fun for me to go back 100 years and read about the visions of the future that people had back then.