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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

The Mad Philosopher

A Startling Adventure

From the Diary of a Physician

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

I had been forced to confess to my wife, on that very morning, that I was alarmed; and she had once more urged it upon me that I should move back to our Eastern home; or, at all events that I should seek a settlement among civilized people, where she and our children could enjoy a few of the blessings of Christian society. But I told her to wait.

I had been settled in Hamilton not quite a year. In looking out a favorable location for one of my profession I had been governed by a consideration which my wife at first bitterly opposed. Instead of seeking a populous place, I cast about for a place which should give signs of future growth, meaning there to cast my lines and grow up with it. And Hamilton was such a place. With one of the best water-powers in the country; a pleasant location; a salubrious climate, soil of surpassing richness; upon the edge of a vast belt of the grandest timber that grew, the place could not but thrive. I had seen how other towns had grown up in that Western world, and I felt sure that Hamilton would grow likewise; and with that conviction upon me I settled down in the infant town, and notified the inhabitants that when they were sick I would minister unto them.

And now I can tell you why, on this morning, I had so flatly refused to leave the place. Within the eleven months I had spent there the population had more than doubled; two new mills had been put up; a wealthy party was negotiating for the building of a flouring mill; and at least a score of dwellings—poor ones, indeed; but nevertheless affording houses for honest men and women—had been erected. And then I was getting quite a practice; and, what was more, the people seemed to respect and trust me. I had not yet… 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?