The Great K & A Train Robbery.

Paul Leicester Ford

The Great K & A Train Robbery.

New York:

Dodd, Mead and Company

1897

(Two copies.)

The detective and narrator of the story is Dick Gordon, superintendent of the Kansas and Arizona Railroad. Paul Ford was a prolific writer on many subjects but not detective fiction. What is most interesting about Ford, a sufferer of kyphosis, is that he was also a victim of murder, specifically fratricide. In 1902, his disinherited brother, a one-time Olympic athlete, shot and killed Ford in his own study in a money dispute and then killed himself. The more worn copy of the book on display is from the library of collector and writer Eric Quayle, author of The Collector’s Book of Detective Fiction.

From the Collection of Jeffrey Johnson