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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

David Bixby’s Relict

How She Entertained a Detective

by Lizzie A. S. Chester

Mrs. Abigail Bixby was a widow lady, the number of years of her life fixed at an indefinite period between forty and sixty; and since the sad morning when the turf had closed finally over Bixby, she felt that all mankind were banded together in seeking her temporal ruin, and that she was the preordained prey of all the sharks of humanity, and more-over looked upon pretty much all humanity as of the shark species. She owned a house and garden spot, pasturage for a cow, a bit of mowing, and some live stock; and every morning she looked out of her bed-room window, before she took her night-cap off, to see if these sharks hadn’t gobbled up some part of her property. She felt that any poor unwashed who had a hungry family might lead off her cow or cosset sheep; thieves might make off with her poultry; or rude boys be caught in her apple trees; the neighbor’s cattle might break into her cornfield; or their pigs root up her garden; for she was a poor widow and everybody took advantage of her.

The milkman gave her short measure and diluted her milk beyond that of all her neighbors. Didn’t she know good milk? In self-defense she bought her cow, or rather she asked the deacon of her church, in whom of all men she could place confidence, to buy one for her. The deacon was cheated, and the deacon cheated her. She bought a new stove and ordered it sent home. The drayman charged fifty cents for bringing it. That was an abomination! She bought some coal, and the depraved dealer sent her a poorer quality. She presumed he thought she would never know the difference! The man who made her garden charged her a quarter of a dollar a day more than he charged anyone else, and so through the whole round—the butcher, baker, and the… 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?