For the first time: one of early pulpdom’s most popular scientific detectives is collected in a comprehensive deluxe edition. Originally appearing in the pages of Street & Smith’s The Popular magazine, Calvin “Scientific” Sprague was a US Government chemist who battled robber barons, saboteurs, criminal syndicates, and the menace of fantastic weapons using his own arcane methods of scientific detection and advanced technology as the train lines stretched West. It is very possible that memories of Scientific Sprague may have been a hitherto-unattributed inspiration for Street & Smith’s later scientific detective creation, Doc Savage.
Written by Francis Lynde, the first half of the Scientific Sprague saga was collected in hardcover soon after publication in The Popular magazine, but the rest of the series has—until now—remained unreprinted. This deluxe edition includes over a dozen Scientific Sprague adventures, along with illustrations taken from the stories’ appearances in newspapers. This deluxe edition also collects dozens of examples of Francis Lynde promotional advertisements, reviews, and author profiles.
Written by Francis Lynde; illustrated by E. Roscoe Shrader and Gene Mack
The Complete Railroad Crime Cases of Scientific Sprague (Deluxe Edition) by Francis Lynde contains the following stories:
- “The Wire Devil”
- “High Finance in Cromarty Gulch”
- “The Electrocution of Tunnel No. 3”
- “The Mystery of the Black Blight”
- “The Cloud-Bursters”
- “The High Kibosh”
- “Very Crude Oil”
- “The Girl and the Ground Wire”
- “Pigskin Hydraulic”
- “Dead Man’s Chance”
- “Gumming Things Up”
- “Potassium Sulphate”
- “The Terror in the Timanyoni”
