Allan Pinkerton), a Scotsman by birth and a barrel-maker by trade, settled in Chicago in its infancy and founded the Pinkertons, the world s first detective agency. Though events associated with the agency after his death has tarnished the name, Pinkerton himself was one of the original human rights advocates. He was a dear friend to John Brown, an advisor to Abraham Lincoln, and 80 years ahead of his time in hiring female detectives. The Expressman and the Detective (1874) is Pinkerton s first attempt at putting his real-life experiences into novel form. Though many later works attributed to Pinkerton are understood to have been ghostwritten, this is the work of the man the London Times calls a man at once deeply admirable and quite obnoxious.
