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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 Thief Sub Rosa

From the Diary of a Detective

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

I was not a professional at that time. In fact, I had never acted in an independent capacity, and was not sure that I should succeed in the particular calling. I was only two-and-twenty, and had been for nearly two years Capt. William Kipp’s “confidential man.” All who remember “Old Kipp,”—his chin ever hidden beneath a heavy silken bandana, and his upper lip brown with snuff,—will remember that when he got upon the track of a rogue, said rogue was sure to be caught. I completed my twenty-second year on the fifth of July, and on the first of the following month Kipp laid aside his heavy folded bandana; bought an extra-sized silver snuff-box; and retired from business, remarking to me,—

“Bob,” (my name is Robert Rogers,)—“when you want a boost into the Force, come to me.”

I thanked him, but did not know whether I should ever tax his kindness or not. Accident, however, very soon decided the matter for me.

Within a week after my old employer’s retirement, as I came in to dinner one day, I found a letter on my plate. It was a city letter, superscribed in a hand entirely strange; but I did not open it then. Fellow boarders are apt to be inquisitive,—and there were nine of them with eyes upon my letter. When alone, I broke the seal of the missive, which I found to be very brief and comprehensive:

“New York, Aug. 7^th, 18—.

“Mr. Robert Rogers—Will you have the kindness to call upon me, at my place of business, No.— Liberty street, this afternoon, at three o’clock? Business of importance to myself, and I trust I may make it of interest to you.

Respectfully yours,

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?