Philo Gubb

Philo Gubb, Correspondence-School Detective, first appeared in the May 1913 issue of Redbook magazine, then one of many pulp magazines which featured short stories and serial novels.

Gubb enrolled in a correspondence course offered by the Rising Sun Agency of Slocum, Ohio in response to a magazine advertisement. He is in general prone to wild theories and the wearing of elaborate and outlandish disguises (which fool nobody) and frequently stumbles upon solutions by accident. On occasion he will show some common sense. In his daily occupation, Gubb hangs wallpaper, and while searching on the river for a smuggler's hidden boat he realizes it is behind a large screen made from a scenic paper-a pattern he'd recently hung.

Philo Gubb appeared in dozens of stories written by Ellis Parker Butler, the most published author of the pulp fiction era. Gubb stories were syndicated widely and appeared in newspapers across the United States until the 1920s.

Gubb attained such a high level of popularity that when Butler tried to kill him off in one story, he was forced to bring him back.