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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 Curious Case of Circumstantial Evidence

by Allan Pinkerton

A curious case of circumstantial evidence was tried before Judge Paxon, in the New York Court of Quarter Sessions, some time since. A shoe manufacturer, named George Bruder, was tried for the alleged theft of three thousand dollars, which was in charge of a bank messenger, named Brooks. The latter left the Security Banking House with certain securities and money for the Clearing House, and on the way stopped at the shop of the shoemaker named, to pay a bill.

The messenger laid his pocket-book and the package on the counter, and placed his arm upon them while he wrote out a bill. When he got to the Clearing House, a count of the securities and money was had, and then, for the first time, it was discovered that there was a deficit of three thousand dollars. The messenger at once returned to Bruder’s shop and made known his loss. The shoemaker denied having seen it, and a search was made of the place. Had the case rested here, there would have been very little upon which to base a belief that the shoemaker handled the money. The Commonwealth called a witness to prove that he was in the shop of George Bruder, the day after the loss, when his daughter came in bearing a package of money, saying that the shop-boy had found it in the cellar; whereupon the defendant claimed that it was his, that he had put it there for safe-keeping, and that he supposed his dog had dug it out of its place of concealment. The shop-boy also testified to finding the money in the cellar, to which he… 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?