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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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Good Stories of the Present Day

Why I Was Sent to State Prison and What I Accomplished

It was the invariable custom of the night watchman of the Merchants’ and Mechanics’ Bank at Clio to throw open the front doors and raise the curtains at 7 1/2 o’clock each morning. By that time all the stores were open and the streets full of people. From 7 1/2 to 8 he swept and dusted, and the bells had scarcely struck the latter hour when the bank officials began to arrive. Then the watchman went home, the doors were closed, and at nine the bank was ready for business.

One September morning the cashier, teller, and two of the clerks arrived to find the heavy front doors still closed. Peter, the watchman, had been in service nine years, and this was the first time he had overslept his hour. The grocer on one side and the shoe man on the other had pounded on the bank doors at a quarter to eight, and not receiving any response, were certain that something out of the way had occurred. There were nine of us who entered the bank as the cashier unlocked the doors. The curtains had not yet been raised when we knew that robbery and murder had taken place. When we got the full light we saw Peter lying on his back on the floor outside of the railing. He was fully dressed, and had been struck on the back of the head; and the blow had crushed in the skull. The body was cold, showing that death had occurred some hours before.

Further investigation proved that the door of the vault had been drilled and blown open, and that the bank had been robbed of every dollar of its cash on hand. Taking the loss of bonds, stocks, and cash, the aggregate was about $80,000, about half… 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?