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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

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A Night Adventure

From the French of Gozlan

About half-past seven in the evening, toward the Fall of the year 1844, two men were seated at table—Balzac the host, Vidocq the guest.

Said the latter: “M. de Balzac, why do you tax your imagination for fiction when you can get reality, before your eyes, close to your ears, under your hand?”

“You believe in reality? I’m delighted. I did not imagine you so innocent. ’Tis only we novelists who create reality and make it visible. Whenever any one comes to me with ‘M. de Balzac, I’ve got a splendid subject for you,’ I know before hearing it that it’s worthless. If the subject is good there are no details; if the details are excellent there is no subject. No reality—only half a fact.”

“But I can give you one.”

“Complete?”

“Complete.”

“Ah!”

And Vidocq commenced: “On the 11th of December, 1834 or 35, a fearfully cold night, I was on duty at the Prefecture de Police. The room in which my colleagues and myself were stationed opened on to the staircase leading to the offices of Monsieur le Préfet. The glass in the upper part of the door was rendered almost opaque by the condensed moisture which had settled on it; but about 1 o’clock I noticed two shadows flit past, and opening the door I saw two women, a lady and her servant, the former dressed in full evening costume. This puzzled me. What could a lady want, one hour after midnight, with the Prefect of Police? Strangely dressed, too; the flowers in her hair put in at hap-hazard; her hair hardly even looked as if it had been combed, and beneath her rouge (for she had used some, although she was very young and marvelously beautiful) her face was ghastly pale. But what struck me as being the most extraordinary in this… 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?