The Legendary Detective: The Private Eye in Fact and Fiction (University of Chicago Press, 2015), by John Walton, distinguished professor of sociology, offers a sweeping history of the American private detective in reality and myth, from the earliest agencies to the hard-boiled heights of the 1930s and ’40s. 

The trail had gone stone cold by the time John Walton set out to unravel a dark mystery. To make matters worse, the shadowy figures he was tailing had been pros at covering their tracks — and were long dead.

Walton, a distinguished professor emeritus of sociology, was searching for the real-life private detectives who inspired crime fiction dating back 175 years and created a myth that rivaled the likes of Robin Hood. Drawing on previously untapped archival accounts of actual detective work, Walton traces both the growth of major private detective agencies like Pinkerton, which became powerful bulwarks against social and labor unrest, and the motley, unglamorous work of small-time operatives.

“This was a story that was meant not to be told,” he said of his latest book, The Legendary Detective: The Private Eye in Fact and Fiction. “So many of the case files, the agency’s own records, were destroyed, and deliberately so.”

View the book at the University of Chicago Press