Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 11

Catalog Note *The Two Detectives; or, The Fortunes of a Bowery Girl* by Albert W. Aiken (1877) opens with two parallel scenes. In a basement saloon called "The Dive" on the Bowery, a sixteen-year-old orphan girl defies Giacomo (called "Jocky"), the Italian proprietor who has raised her, refusing his demand that she steal. When he attempts to strike her, she fights back, striking him under the ear before he draws a knife. Simultaneously, uptown in a mansion on Thirty-first Street, wealthy retired merchant Obadiah Ollkoff confronts his feeble nephew Algernon about mounting debts, informing him this is the final time he will pay them and that Algernon will not inherit his considerable fortune. The narrative juxtaposes the violent struggles of street life against the mercenary calculations of the wealthy.