[b]The Under Dogs[/b] is the first novel of the Madame Rosika Storey detective series (she had already appeared in short story form); it first appeared as a six-part serial in [i]Argosy[/i], Jan 3 to Feb 7, 1925. There are distinct fingerprints of Frank Packard's 1914 novel [i]Jimmie Dale[/i], although the criminals are both more believable and less vicious in Footner's variation on a theme.

Robert Sampson, in Yesterday's Faces: The Solvers, provides several pages of background on Madame Storey. For this novel he writes: "Matters begin with violence. A girl, promising sensational revelations, is on her way to Madame Storey's office. Before she arrives there, she is clubbed down and kidnapped. Attempting to search out the girl, Rosika and Bella (Storey's secretary cum companion — who is horrified by the idea) move into the underworld. The cool, high-fashion Rosika suddenly shows a genius for disguise and an ability to shine in low company, down among the East-side gin mills. Her investigation gradually narrows to a house on Varick Street, populated by very hard cases, male and female. There are dead men under the basement floor, a chained prisoner in the attic, and a reluctant gang of crooks being blackmailed to work the will of a master mind, dimly seen."

Product Description

William Hulbert Footner (1879-1944) was a Canadian writer of non-fiction and detective fiction. His first published works were travelogues of canoe trips on the Hudson River and in the Northwest Territory along the Peace River, Hay River and Fraser River. He also wrote a series of northwest adventures during the period 1911 through 1920, including The Sealed Valley (1914) and The Fur Bringers (1920). About 1920 Footner began to write detective fiction. His first series detective character was Madame Rosika Storey. Footner's other series detective is Amos Lee Mappin, a successful, middle aged mystery writer whose crimes tend to occur in New York's cafe society. Mappin is unusual in that his "Watson" (at least in some of his tales) is a young woman, his secretary Fanny Parran. She is one of the few female "Watsons" in fiction, an example of how female-oriented Footner's fiction is. Amongst his other works are: Two on the Trail (1911), New Rivers of the North (1912), Jack Chanty (1913), The Huntress (1917), Thieve's Wit (1918), The Substitute Millionaire (1919), The Fur Bringers: A Story of the Canadian Northwest (1920) and The Owl Taxi (1921).

Madame Rosika Storey is a detective living near Gramercy Park, NY, created in the mid-1920s by Canadian born Hulbert Footner. Storey's secretary, companion and gushing admirer, Bella Brickley narrates through five novels and thirty short stories as her hero solves crimes and straightens out people's problems. The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection calls her, "a stunningly beautiful young woman who describes herself as 'a practical psychologist--specializing in the feminine."

Mike Grost wrote: "Hulbert Footner's tales of Madame Rosika Storey have a period charm. They tend not to be overwhelmingly brilliant as puzzle plots. Footner's tales, from the 1920's and 30's seem oddly old-fashioned for their era. His detective technique would have seemed familiar to Émile Gaboriau in the 1860's: footprints, rooms searched for hidden clues, an obvious suspect and a hidden suspect, mild sorts of financial skullduggery lurking in the background. Footner was good at describing every sort of romantic attraction. He was alert to the emotional feelings of his characters. His characters are oddly, rawly sexual for their eras: one is especially startled by the gigolos in "Wolves of Monte Carlo", but Footner liked to include really handsome, seductive young men in many of his tales. Footner is perhaps a bit influenced by the Jazz Age tradition of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and its emphasis on both romance and sexuality. Madame Rosika in Madame Storey is somewhat unusual as a great detective of the era who happens to be a woman. She works as a paid professional, uses her brains, is universally respected for her skill, and basically plays the same role in her world that Hercule Poirot does in his."