Edwin Balmer 
Keeban 

Edwin Balmer’s 1923 novel Keeban is a mystery-adventure-romance, billed as “a novel of the Underworld and the Upper”—meaning, of course, that it has High Society clashing with the criminal classes. It’s a good read and has been unjustly neglected. Science fiction readers (who only know him for his two classic novels) are not likely to track it down. Mystery readers favor his 12-story series about Luther Trant, an early scientific detective armed with psychoanalysis to help track down crooks. (The Trant series was co-written with William B. Mac Harg, Balmer’s brother-in-law, also a prolific pulp author.)

So here’s your chance to explore some unknown territory…the dark side of 1920s Chicago!