Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 382

Cool Kit, the King of Kids (Chapter I-II, author of "Deadwood Dick" series). This boy detective story, published November 1884, features Cool Kit, a sixteen-year-old Philadelphia newsboy with sharp wits and brown eyes who sells papers along Chestnut Street. When reading reports of a young girl's apparent suicide—stabbed through the heart in a vacant lot with no identified weapon—Kit suspects foul play and recruits Detective Simon Yale to view the beautiful golden-haired corpse at the city morgue. The inquest ruled it suicide, but Kit remains convinced otherwise, determined to launch his detective career by solving the case. The narrative then follows Kit boarding a Ridge Avenue streetcar toward his lodgings, where he encounters a drunken mechanic and confronts danger. Kit resolves to investigate independently, declaring himself "Cool Kit, the Detective."