The first earthquake novel on the scene was Travers: A Story of the San Francisco Earthquake by Sara Dean. Although not a traditional mystery story, crime plays a central role in the plot. Published in February 1908, Travers is the ripped-from-the-headlines story of a San Francisco socialite named Gwendolyn Thornton who is awoken by a thief in her home. As she confronts the intruder, the earthquake strikes, destroying her house. After escaping—with the help of the intruder—to the safety of a refugee camp on Twin Peaks, Gwen learns that her rescuer, a British ex-army surgeon named Keith Travers, had been dismissed from his regiment following a scandal and forced into a life of crime. The earthquake offers Travers an opportunity to reclaim his reputation and standing in society. Written so soon after the actual earthquake, the novel features graphic descriptions of the city and its residents in the wake of the disaster.
The great California writer Gertrude Atherton used the 1906 earthquake to propel the plot of her one foray into mystery fiction—although the mystery in The Avalanche (1919) is more genealogical than criminal. In San Francisco, in the years immediately following the earthquake, Price Ruyler is married and has firmly established himself in business and society. After he overhears an exchange between his mother-in-law and a man known to have made his living as a pimp and a gambler before the earthquake and fire, he begins to suspect that his wife’s past might not be as innocent as he was led to believe. He hires a private detective to investigate and uncovers a plot involving blackmail, betrayal, and the consequences of losing an entire city’s public records.
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Randal Brandt is a librarian at the University of California, Berkeley where, among other things, he is curator of the Bancroft Library's California Detective Fiction Collection.
