Harry Stephen Keeler
Encyclopedia
Harry Stephen Keeler was a prolific but little-known American
author
.
in 1890, Keeler spent his childhood exclusively in this city, which was so beloved by the author that a large number of his works took place in and around it. In many of his novels, Keeler refers to Chicago as "the London of the west." The expression is explained in the opening of Thieves' Nights (1929): "Here ... were seemingly the same hawkers ... selling the same goods ... here too was the confusion, the babble of tongues of many lands, the restless, shoving throng containing faces and features of a thousand racial castes, and last but not least, here on Halsted and Maxwell streets, Chicago, were the same dirt, flying bits of torn paper, and confusion that graced the junction of Middlesex and Whitechapel High streets far across the globe." Other locales for Keeler novels include New Orleans and New York. In his later works, Keeler's settings are often more generic settings such as Big River, or a city in which all buildings and streets are either nameless or fictional. Keeler is known to have visited London at least once, but his occasional depictions of British characters are consistently implausible.
), graduating with a degree in electrical engineering.
When Keeler was about twenty, his mother committed him to an insane asylum for reasons unknown, thus fostering his interest in the insane, insane asylums and the sane who had been committed to such places, as well as a life-long violent antipathy towards the psychiatric profession.
After graduation, he took a job as an electrician in a steel mill, working by day and writing by night. It was at this time that Keeler met his future wife, Hazel Goodwin, whom he married in 1919.
His first four novels were originally released in England by Hutchinson, beginning in 1924, with The Voice of the Seven Sparrows . Beginning in 1927, E. P. Dutton
took over publication of Keeler's novels in the US. Between 1927 and 1942, Dutton would go on to release 37 novels by Keeler. In the UK, publication of Keeler's novels, sometimes with altered titles and reworked prose, fell to Ward Lock who went on to publish 48 novels by Keeler from 1929 to 1953. The Voice of the Seven Sparrows introduced audiences the world over to Keeler's complicated "webwork
" story lines with wildly improbable in-story coincidences and sometimes sheerly baffling conclusions. Keeler's complex, labyrinthine stories mostly alienated his intended reading audience.
Keeler's relations with the Duttons grew increasingly erratic and strained as his novels grew increasingly longer and correspondingly less and less popular. His 1941 novel The Peacock Fan appears to take a dig at the Duttons through a pair of faintly disguised characters, and in 1942 after releasing The Book With The Orange Leaves he was finally dropped by Dutton, although Ward Lock continued to issue his books in the UK until 1953.
Because of his initial popularity with Dutton, however, Keeler began to gain some notoriety in the mid-1930s as a purveyor of new and original stories. His popularity peaked when his book Sing Sing Nights was used to "suggest" two different low-budget mystery/adventure films, Sing Sing Nights
(Monogram Pictures, 1933) and The Mysterious Mr. Wong
(Monogram, 1935), the latter of which starred screen legend Bela Lugosi
. During this period Keeler was employed as an editor for Ten Story Book, a popular pulp short-story magazine that also included photos of nude and scantily clad young women. Keeler proceeded to fill the spaces between the stories with his own peculiar brand of humor, as well as illustrations by his wife. (He also included frequent publicity for his own books.)
Keeler's novels were picked up by rental library publisher Phoenix Press, known in the business as the "last stop on the publishing bus." By 1953, British publishers Ward Lock & Co
printed their final Keeler novel, thus forcing the writer to pen his stories exclusively for an overseas market with stories often translated for publication in Spain and Portugal.
Hazel died in 1960. Pressing forward, Keeler remarried in 1963 (to his onetime secretary Thelma Rinaldo), which rejuvenated his spirit for writing. Unfortunately, many of the new stories written by Keeler during this time went unpublished, including the relatively infamous The Scarlet Mummy. Keeler died in Chicago four years later, in 1967.
In 2005, The Collins Library (an imprint of McSweeney's
) republished Keeler's 1934 classic, The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, a project much pursued by writer and publisher Paul Collins
.
plot." This can be defined as a plot that includes many strands or threads (each thread representing a character or significant object), which intersect in complex causal interactions. A webwork novel typically ends with a surprise revelation that clarifies these interactions retrospectively. According to Keeler's 1927 series of articles on plot theory, "The Mechanics (and Kinematics) of Web-Work Plot Construction," a webwork plot is typically built around a sequence in which the main character intersects at least four other strands, one after the other, and each of these encounters causes the next one. Keeler never claimed to have invented the webwork plot, but only to be its theorist and practitioner.
Keeler followed a writing procedure of his own; he'd often write a huge manuscript, perhaps twice the length required. He'd then cut it down to size, removing unnecessary subplots and incidents. The removed material (which he called "the Chunk") would sit around until Keeler wrote another manuscript to use it — which might result in yet another cutting procedure, and another "Chunk." In his book Thieves' Nights, the hero reads a book which is about two other men telling stories: a framing device within a framing device. In another book, Keeler and his wife turn up as characters in a story.
Keeler also kept a large file of newspaper clippings featuring unusual stories and incidents. He is reputed to have pasted these into the rough outlines of his novels, adding notes like "Have this happen to...."
Keeler is known for the MacGuffin
-esque insertion of skulls into nearly all his stories. While many plots revolved around a skull or the use of one in a crime or ritual, others featured skulls merely as a side diversion, including one case where a human skull was used as a paperweight on the desk of a police detective.
Several of Keeler's novels make reference to a (fictitious) book titled The Way Out, which is apparently a tome of ancient Oriental wisdom. The significance of the nonexistent Way Out in Keeler's universe is equivalent to the role played by the Necronomicon
within H. P. Lovecraft
's Cthulhu Mythos
.
writers such as Neil Gaiman
and Futurama
producer Ken Keeler
(no relation); Ken Keeler says in the DVD commentary for "Time Keeps On Slippin'
" that the story "Strange Romance" from the book Y. Cheung, Business Detective was an inspiration for the episode. In the late 1930s, British writer John Russell Fearn
gave credit to Keeler for inspiring his experiments with webwork plots in his pulp SF stories.
Writer Jack Woodford
wrote the article Tale Incredible: The True Story of Harry Stephen Keeler's Literary Rise about Keeler.
Keeler's webwork technique anticipates the so-called hysterical realism
of later novelists such as Thomas Pynchon
. Gabriele Rico in Writing the Natural Way advises aspiring writers to practice a form of webwork, which she calls "clustering", to encourage associational thinking which can be used to create characters and plot lines.
Films that exhibit probably unwitting similarities to Keeler's work include Murder Story (1989
), in which Christopher Lee
plays a Keeler-like character who keeps a large collection of newspaper clippings as part of his "Willard Hope Technique" for writing novels, which closely resembles Keeler's "webwork novel" technique. R. Kelly
's series of music videos Trapped in the Closet
shows a number of parallels to Keeler's style.
In 2010, Harold S. Karstens published De Sciencefictionschrijver, a novel about one man's obsession with Keeler.
Marceau Series
The Mysterious Mr. I
Vagabond Nights
Hallowe'en Nights
Adventures of a Skull
The Big River Trilogy
Circus Series
The Way Out Series
Steeltown Series
Quiribus Brown Series
Hong Lei Chung Series
Ramble House
Series
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
.
Biography
Born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in 1890, Keeler spent his childhood exclusively in this city, which was so beloved by the author that a large number of his works took place in and around it. In many of his novels, Keeler refers to Chicago as "the London of the west." The expression is explained in the opening of Thieves' Nights (1929): "Here ... were seemingly the same hawkers ... selling the same goods ... here too was the confusion, the babble of tongues of many lands, the restless, shoving throng containing faces and features of a thousand racial castes, and last but not least, here on Halsted and Maxwell streets, Chicago, were the same dirt, flying bits of torn paper, and confusion that graced the junction of Middlesex and Whitechapel High streets far across the globe." Other locales for Keeler novels include New Orleans and New York. In his later works, Keeler's settings are often more generic settings such as Big River, or a city in which all buildings and streets are either nameless or fictional. Keeler is known to have visited London at least once, but his occasional depictions of British characters are consistently implausible.
Early adulthood
Keeler's mother was a widow several times over who operated a boarding house popular with theatrical performers. Beginning around age sixteen, Keeler pumped out a steady stream of original short stories and serials that were subsequently published in many small pulp magazines of the day. He attended the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of TechnologyIllinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly called Illinois Tech or IIT, is a private Ph.D.-granting university located in Chicago, Illinois, with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, communications, industrial technology, information technology, design, and law...
), graduating with a degree in electrical engineering.
When Keeler was about twenty, his mother committed him to an insane asylum for reasons unknown, thus fostering his interest in the insane, insane asylums and the sane who had been committed to such places, as well as a life-long violent antipathy towards the psychiatric profession.
After graduation, he took a job as an electrician in a steel mill, working by day and writing by night. It was at this time that Keeler met his future wife, Hazel Goodwin, whom he married in 1919.
With E.P. Dutton
Eight of Keeler's earliest works first appeared in pulp fiction magazines like Complete Novel and Top Notch.His first four novels were originally released in England by Hutchinson, beginning in 1924, with The Voice of the Seven Sparrows . Beginning in 1927, E. P. Dutton
E. P. Dutton
E. P. Dutton was an American book publishing company founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts in 1852 by Edward Payson Dutton. In 1986, the company was acquired by Penguin Group and split into two imprints: Dutton Penguin and Dutton Children's Books.-History:Edward Payson Dutton founded...
took over publication of Keeler's novels in the US. Between 1927 and 1942, Dutton would go on to release 37 novels by Keeler. In the UK, publication of Keeler's novels, sometimes with altered titles and reworked prose, fell to Ward Lock who went on to publish 48 novels by Keeler from 1929 to 1953. The Voice of the Seven Sparrows introduced audiences the world over to Keeler's complicated "webwork
Webwork
webwork can refer to:* A webwork plot is a type of literary form defined and practiced by Harry Stephen Keeler.* WeBWorK is a "web-based homework system" by University of Rochester....
" story lines with wildly improbable in-story coincidences and sometimes sheerly baffling conclusions. Keeler's complex, labyrinthine stories mostly alienated his intended reading audience.
Keeler's relations with the Duttons grew increasingly erratic and strained as his novels grew increasingly longer and correspondingly less and less popular. His 1941 novel The Peacock Fan appears to take a dig at the Duttons through a pair of faintly disguised characters, and in 1942 after releasing The Book With The Orange Leaves he was finally dropped by Dutton, although Ward Lock continued to issue his books in the UK until 1953.
Because of his initial popularity with Dutton, however, Keeler began to gain some notoriety in the mid-1930s as a purveyor of new and original stories. His popularity peaked when his book Sing Sing Nights was used to "suggest" two different low-budget mystery/adventure films, Sing Sing Nights
Sing Sing Nights (film)
Sing Sing Nights is a 1934 American film directed by Lewis D. Collins, based on the 1927 novel by American Author Harry Stephen Keeler .- Plot summary :...
(Monogram Pictures, 1933) and The Mysterious Mr. Wong
The Mysterious Mr. Wong
The Mysterious Mr. Wong is a mystery film starring Bela Lugosi as a powerful criminal of the Chinatown underworld, and Wallace Ford as a wisecracking reporter.-Plot:...
(Monogram, 1935), the latter of which starred screen legend Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
. During this period Keeler was employed as an editor for Ten Story Book, a popular pulp short-story magazine that also included photos of nude and scantily clad young women. Keeler proceeded to fill the spaces between the stories with his own peculiar brand of humor, as well as illustrations by his wife. (He also included frequent publicity for his own books.)
Later years: Phoenix Press
In spite of his popularity, Keeler's fiction and writing style grew increasingly bizarre, often substituting laboriously lengthy dialogues and diatribes between characters for action or plot. These events led his American publisher, Dutton, to drop him in 1942. The next eleven years were hard for Keeler as his writing drifted even further beyond the norm and short stories written by his wife (a moderately successful writer herself) were found increasingly within his novels. Keeler typically padded the length of his novels with the following device: his protagonist would find a magazine or book, would open it randomly and discover a story. At this point, Keeler's novel would stop dead in its tracks and he would insert the complete verbatim text of one of his wife's short stories, this being the story his novel's protagonist was reading. At the end of the story, the novel would continue where it left off, several pages nearer to its contractual minimum word count. These stories-within-the-novel typically contained only a few scraps of information that were relevant to the novel in which they appeared.Keeler's novels were picked up by rental library publisher Phoenix Press, known in the business as the "last stop on the publishing bus." By 1953, British publishers Ward Lock & Co
Ward Lock & Co
Ward Lock & Co was a publishing house in the United Kingdom that started as a partnership and developed until it was eventually absorbed into the publishing combine of Orion Publishing Group.-History:...
printed their final Keeler novel, thus forcing the writer to pen his stories exclusively for an overseas market with stories often translated for publication in Spain and Portugal.
Hazel died in 1960. Pressing forward, Keeler remarried in 1963 (to his onetime secretary Thelma Rinaldo), which rejuvenated his spirit for writing. Unfortunately, many of the new stories written by Keeler during this time went unpublished, including the relatively infamous The Scarlet Mummy. Keeler died in Chicago four years later, in 1967.
In 2005, The Collins Library (an imprint of McSweeney's
McSweeney's
McSweeney's is an American publishing house founded by editor Dave Eggers.Apart from its book list, McSweeney's is responsible for four regular publications: the quarterly literary journal,...
) republished Keeler's 1934 classic, The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, a project much pursued by writer and publisher Paul Collins
Paul Collins (writer)
Paul Collins is an American writer, editor and associate professor of English at Portland State University. He is best known for his work with McSweeney's and The Believer, as editor of the Collins Library imprint for McSweeney's Books, and for his appearances on National Public Radio's Weekend...
.
Writing trademarks
Most of Keeler's novels feature a "webworkWebwork
webwork can refer to:* A webwork plot is a type of literary form defined and practiced by Harry Stephen Keeler.* WeBWorK is a "web-based homework system" by University of Rochester....
plot." This can be defined as a plot that includes many strands or threads (each thread representing a character or significant object), which intersect in complex causal interactions. A webwork novel typically ends with a surprise revelation that clarifies these interactions retrospectively. According to Keeler's 1927 series of articles on plot theory, "The Mechanics (and Kinematics) of Web-Work Plot Construction," a webwork plot is typically built around a sequence in which the main character intersects at least four other strands, one after the other, and each of these encounters causes the next one. Keeler never claimed to have invented the webwork plot, but only to be its theorist and practitioner.
Keeler followed a writing procedure of his own; he'd often write a huge manuscript, perhaps twice the length required. He'd then cut it down to size, removing unnecessary subplots and incidents. The removed material (which he called "the Chunk") would sit around until Keeler wrote another manuscript to use it — which might result in yet another cutting procedure, and another "Chunk." In his book Thieves' Nights, the hero reads a book which is about two other men telling stories: a framing device within a framing device. In another book, Keeler and his wife turn up as characters in a story.
Keeler also kept a large file of newspaper clippings featuring unusual stories and incidents. He is reputed to have pasted these into the rough outlines of his novels, adding notes like "Have this happen to...."
Keeler is known for the MacGuffin
MacGuffin
A MacGuffin is "a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction". The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is...
-esque insertion of skulls into nearly all his stories. While many plots revolved around a skull or the use of one in a crime or ritual, others featured skulls merely as a side diversion, including one case where a human skull was used as a paperweight on the desk of a police detective.
Several of Keeler's novels make reference to a (fictitious) book titled The Way Out, which is apparently a tome of ancient Oriental wisdom. The significance of the nonexistent Way Out in Keeler's universe is equivalent to the role played by the Necronomicon
Necronomicon
The Necronomicon is a fictional grimoire appearing in the stories by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound", written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in...
within H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
's Cthulhu Mythos
Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...
.
Influence and parallels
Keeler has influenced science fictionScience fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
writers such as Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
and Futurama
Futurama
Futurama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of a late 20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J...
producer Ken Keeler
Ken Keeler
Kenneth "Ken" Keeler is an American television producer and writer. He has written for numerous television series, most notably The Simpsons and Futurama. According to an interview with David X. Cohen, he proved a theorem which appears in the Futurama episode "The Prisoner of Benda".-Career:After...
(no relation); Ken Keeler says in the DVD commentary for "Time Keeps On Slippin'
Time Keeps on Slippin'
"Time Keeps On Slippin" is the 14th episode in season 3 of Futurama. It originally aired May 6, 2001. The title is from a lyric in Fly Like an Eagle by Steve Miller Band which was featured in the basketball film Space Jam...
" that the story "Strange Romance" from the book Y. Cheung, Business Detective was an inspiration for the episode. In the late 1930s, British writer John Russell Fearn
John Russell Fearn
John Russell Fearn was a British author and one of the first British writers to appear in American pulp science fiction magazines.-Career:...
gave credit to Keeler for inspiring his experiments with webwork plots in his pulp SF stories.
Writer Jack Woodford
Jack Woodford
Jack Woodford was a successful pulp novelist and non-fiction author of the 1930s and 1940s. He wrote unique books on writing and getting published...
wrote the article Tale Incredible: The True Story of Harry Stephen Keeler's Literary Rise about Keeler.
Keeler's webwork technique anticipates the so-called hysterical realism
Hysterical realism
Hysterical realism, also called recherché postmodernism, is a term coined in 2000 by the English critic James Wood in an essay on Zadie Smith's White Teeth to describe what he sees as a literary genre typified by a strong contrast between elaborately absurd prose, plotting, or characterization and...
of later novelists such as Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
. Gabriele Rico in Writing the Natural Way advises aspiring writers to practice a form of webwork, which she calls "clustering", to encourage associational thinking which can be used to create characters and plot lines.
Films that exhibit probably unwitting similarities to Keeler's work include Murder Story (1989
1989 in film
-Events:* Batman is released on June 23, and goes on to gross over $410 million worldwide.* Actress Kim Basinger and her brother Mick purchase Braselton, Georgia, for $20 million...
), in which Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ is an English actor and musician. Lee initially portrayed villains and became famous for his role as Count Dracula in a string of Hammer Horror films...
plays a Keeler-like character who keeps a large collection of newspaper clippings as part of his "Willard Hope Technique" for writing novels, which closely resembles Keeler's "webwork novel" technique. R. Kelly
R. Kelly
Robert Sylvester Kelly , better known by his stage name R. Kelly, is an American singer-songwriter and record producer. A native of Chicago, Kelly began performing during the late 1980s and debuted in 1992 with the group Public Announcement. In 1993, Kelly went solo with the album 12 Play...
's series of music videos Trapped in the Closet
Trapped in the Closet
"Trapped in the Closet" is a series of songs by American contemporary R&B singer R. Kelly. The song set consists of 22 chapters, which were released from 2005 to 2007. The first five chapters of the set are included on his seventh studio album TP.3 Reloaded, with the first chapter being released as...
shows a number of parallels to Keeler's style.
In 2010, Harold S. Karstens published De Sciencefictionschrijver, a novel about one man's obsession with Keeler.
Series
Tuddleton Trotter Series- The Matilda Hunter Murder (1931) (UK title The Black Satchel)
- The Case of the Barking Clock (1947)
- The Trap (1956)
Marceau Series
- The Marceau Case (1936)
- X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard (1936)
- The Wonderful Scheme of Mr. Christopher Thorne (1936)
- Y. Cheung, Business Detective (1939)
The Mysterious Mr. I
- The Mysterious Mr. I (1937)
- The Chameleon (1939)
Vagabond Nights
- The Skull of the Waltzing Clown (1935)
- The Defrauded Yeggman (1937)
- Ten Hours (1937)
- When Thief Meets Thief (1938)
Hallowe'en Nights
- Finger! Finger! (1938)
- Behind That Mask (1938)
Adventures of a Skull
- The Man with the Magic Eardrums (1939)
- The Man with the Crimson Box (1940)
- The Man with the Wooden Spectacles (1941)
- The Case of the Lavender Gripsack (1941)
The Big River Trilogy
- The Portrait of Jirjohn Cobb (1939) (UK title: Find Actor Hart)
- Cleopatra's Tears (1940)
- The Bottle with the Green Wax Seal (1942)
Circus Series
- The Vanishing Gold Truck (1941)
- The Case of the Jeweled Ragpicker (1948) (UK title The Ace of Spades Murder)
- Stand By—London Calling! (1953)
- The Case of the Crazy Corpse
- The Circus Stealers
- A Copy of Beowulf
- Report on Vanessa Hewstone
- The Six from Nowhere
- The Case of the Two-Headed Idiot
The Way Out Series
- The Peacock Fan
- The Sharkskin Book
- The Book with the Orange Leaves
- The Case of the Two Strange Ladies
- The Case of the 16 Beans
Steeltown Series
- The Case of the Canny Killer
- The Steeltown Strangler
- The Crimson Cube
Quiribus Brown Series
- The Murdered Mathematician
- The Case of the Flying Hands
Hong Lei Chung Series
- The Strange Will
- The Street of a Thousand Eyes
- The Six from Nowhere
- The Riddle of the Wooden Parakeet
Ramble House
Ramble House
Ramble House is a small American publisher founded by Fender Tucker and Jim Weiler in 1999. The press specializes in reprints of long-neglected and rare crime fiction novels, modern crime fiction and scholarly works by noted authors on the crime fiction genre, and a host of other diverse books of a...
Series
- The White Circle
- I Killed Lincoln at 10:13!
- Strange Journey
Non-series novels
- Adventure in Milwaukee
- The Affair of the Bottled Deuce
- The Amazing Web (1930)
- The Blackmailer
- The Box from Japan (1932)
- The Case of the Ivory Arrow
- The Case of the Mysterious Moll (1944) (UK title: The Iron Ring)
- The Case of the Transparent Nude
- The Case of the Transposed Legs
- The Face of the Man from Saturn (1933) (UK Title The Crilly Court Mystery)
- Find the Clock (1925)
- The Five Silver Buddhas (1935)
- The Flyer Hold-Up
- The Fourth King (1929)
- The Gallows Waits, My Lord
- The Green Jade Hand (1930)
- Hangman's Nights
- The Iron Ring
- John Jones's Dollar (1927)
- The Man Who Changed His Skin
- The Monocled Monster
- The Murder of London Lew
- The Mysterious Card
- The Mysterious Ivory Ball of Wong Shing Li
- The Mystery of the Fiddling Cracksman (1934) (UK title The Fiddling Cracksman)
- The Photo of Lady X
- The Riddle of the Travelling Skull (1934) (UK title The Traveling Skull)
- The Scarlet Mummy (1965)
- The Search for X-Y-Z
- Sing Sing Nights (1928)
- The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro (1926) (also published as The Blue Spectacles)
- The Straw Hat Murders
- The Stolen Gravestone
- Thieves' Nights (1929)
- The Riddle of the Yellow Zuri (1930) (UK title: The Tiger Snake)
- The Voice of the Seven Sparrows (1924)
- The Washington Square Enigma (1933) (UK title: Under Twelve Stars)
External links
- The Harry Stephen Keeler Home Page
- The Harry Stephen Keeler Society
- 'My Trip to Columbia University To Discover the Unknown Works of Harry Stephen Keeler' - An overview of Keeler's published works.
- Ramble House - Publisher of Keeler reprints.