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I was a house detective

Stewart Sterling

Correspondence House Detectives Reminiscences Hotel Crooks

An entertaining slice of life - hotel life - seen through the eyes of a hotel detective working in Atlantic City, New York, and Boston in the years before and after WWII. Lots of anecdotes, mild by today's standards, but in those days considered juicy enough to warrant a salacious cover. No sketch of the college girl who threw her satin panties out of the window at a sailor, alas.

Well worth reading if you are interested in a look behind the scenes at major metropolitan establishments in the bad old days*. Includes an amusing glossary of vintage hotel slang.

(*bad old days because house detectives in hotels were expected to police public morals - no entertaining members of the opposite sex and God help you if the staff determined that you were a "Lizzie" or a "Claude" on the prowl).