Pinkerton, Frank: Dyke Darrell, Railroad Detective (1886); v1; 11 May 2020
 

An entertaining example of the 1880s dime novel, written by the son of the founder of Pinkerton's detective agency. Melodramatic in the extreme, it tells of the search for a gang that robbed a train between Chicago and St Louis, killing one of the crew.

Dyke Darrel, celebrated Pinkertons agent, is called in, and the sort of actions you see in a Saturday movie serial of the 1930s ensues before it is all wrapped up. Cops and crooks wear disguises by which even their closest friends can't recognise them (although from the description they are no more impenetrable than Clark Kent's spectacles), trapdoors, ambushes...

All good fun, specially the improbable dialogue.