Harvey J. O'Higgins

Harvey Jerrold O’Higgins (November 14, 1876 – February 28, 1929) was a Canadian-born novelist, journalist, and dramatist best known today for his psychologically informed Detective Duff stories. Born in London, Ontario, he studied at the University of Toronto (1893–97) before turning to journalism and fiction, later moving to the United States as his magazine detective tales found an audience. His career spanned social-issue collaborations and Broadway plays (often with Harriet Ford), but his lasting genre footprint is Detective Duff Unravels It (1929), a posthumous collection featuring John Duff, a sleuth who blends informant networks with early psychoanalytic thinking. The book is recognized both in Ellery Queen’s “Queen’s Quorum” and among the Haycraft–Queen Cornerstones for its pioneering use of psychoanalysis in detection.