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Web Site Showcases
American Detective Fiction

Posting all Detective Fiction
Prior to Conan Doyle

Fully Searchable

The mission of the Westminster Detective Library to catalog and make available online all the short fiction dealing with detectives and detection published in the United States before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891).

This site grew out of research for the anthology Early American Detective Stories (McFarland 2008) that I edited with my mentor and colleague LeRoy Lad Panek (1943-2021), winner of two Edgar awards for his contributions to the scholarly field of detective criticism. We uncovered a treasure-trove of forgotten and previously unavailable detective stories, many more than could be included in a single anthology. And so this on-going project was born.

The site includes a working bibliography; full-text copy of entries are added as they are prepared. A few stories that were published in Britain but which appear to have been previously published in America have also been included and are indicated by an asterisk in the bibliography. I welcome comments and solicit both additional bibliographical entries and texts.

Mary M. Bendel-Simso, editor

Select Story

A Strange Case

Where a Pair of Lost Ear-Rings Were Found

by H. C. Fulton

During my twenty years’ experience as a detective I have had a great many very complicated, mysterious and exciting cases; but when you ask me about a strange case, I can give you one that is not very old.

It was a cold day, and the ground was covered with snow, when a servant entered my office and handed me a letter written by a lady for whom I had done business. I will call her Mrs. Harris, for she is a prominent woman in New York society, and I don’t care to give her true name. She is very wealthy, and lives on Fifth Avenue.

The letter informed me that her diamonds had been stolen, and asked me to accompany her servant to her house at once. I looked at the servant and fell to thinking, without being in any apparent hurry. It don’t do for a detective to be in too much of a hurry. Something may be overlooked if he is. Of course, as yet I knew nothing of the particulars, but before me stood a man who might have had an opportunity to steal the missing jewels.

“Can’t you come?” asked the man. “Were you told I was to go with you?” I said, quickly, and looked him straight in the face. “No, I… Read More

Miscellany

The Detective of the Present -- Finn and Jourdan

Time was when a detective was a man who detected things. A detective is still that in some European countries; and he still detects things—in novels. There's Buckett in “Bleak House” who detects Lady Dedlook, and there's that detective in Collin’s story of the “Moon Stone,” quite a detector. New York used to have Old Hayes, who could detect a thing or two; Paris has had Vidocq, and Bow street has had Forster.* But the race has died out entirely in America, and is dying out in England.

Commissioner Jourdan, of Brooklyn, has been making an effort to raise up a detective or two and has actually produced Corr and Bill. Corr and Bill were raised to the Vidocquian task of tracing a mystic murder. Finnan is a hatter; and Finnan has been in States Prison. That ought to be enough for any detective such as Corr to concluded that Finnan did the deed. Edgar A. Poe could not reason out a conclusion clearer than that. So Corr went to where Finnan was making hats.

Is Finnan here? Yes—want to see him?