Craig Kennedy

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Fictional detective character created by Arthur B. Reeve.

Professor Craig Kennedy at Columbia University is a scientific detective similar to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Thorndyke. He uses his knowledge of chemistry and psychoanalysis to solve cases, and uses exotic (at the time) devices in his work such as lie detectors, gyroscopes, and portable seismographs. Craig Kennedy became the prototype for American scientific detectives and their adventures, influencing the creation of later characters such as Doc Savage and Batman.

He first appeared in the December, 1910 issue of Cosmopolitan, in "The Case of Helen Bond," and then came back for many short stories in magazines as various as The Popular Magazine and World Man Hunters, as well as in 26 novels. Through the 1920s, he became more of a typical detective. Craig Kennedy appeared in a number of 1930s pulp magazines, Complete Detective Novel Magazine, Dime Detective, Popular Detective, Weird Tales, and others, but many of these appear to be ghost-written as they lack the style and flavor of the teen-era Craig Kennedy stories. A series of six Craig Kennedy stories in early issues Popular Detective are known to have been ghost-written by A. T. Locke.

There is a 1952 TV series called "Craig Kennedy, Criminologist", which was based on the same character.