Average Jones

Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871-1958) was an American investigative journalist. Adams worked for the New York Sun and McClure's magazine. He was considered a muckraker for his writings on public health conditions. His essays on medicines had a huge influence on the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. Adams was also a fiction writer. His short story Night Bus became the basis for the movie It happened One Night. Average Jones is a bored young man living in New York. A newspaper friend suggests he go into business as a consumer watchdog. Jones works on run of the mill cases while searching for more interesting cases which involve crimes. The first story is a locked room mystery. "The B-Flat Trombone" investigates the death of mayoral candidate William Linder who was blown up in a locked room on the third floor of his mansion in Brooklyn.