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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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Settling the Fenwick Estate

by Frances Mary Schoolcraft

The Fenwick estate was originally settled by Mohawk Indians, I believe. Of this time I have no authentic record, and therefore do not pretend to describe it. The tract of land was changed from a forest into a manor, by virtue of a piece of sheepskin given by James Duke, of York, to James Fenwick. James Fenwick settled the estate by importing some colonists, and encouraging others already imported. It gave him a great deal of trouble, no doubt, but not half the trouble that the final settlement gave to Nicholas Ames, after James Fenwick’s last descendant died in 1805.

Nicholas Ames was a lawyer by profession, and his legal knowledge was chiefly exercised in discharging the office of trustee for the benefit of numerous widows and orphans. One of the orphans (a promising male infant of nineteen) wrested the title of a moral tale into an irreverent epithet, and called him “Old Ames and Obstacles.” The applicability of this name lay in a peculiarity of Mr. Ames, which led him almost invariably to raise objections to advancing the beneficiaries of a trust a dollar more than he was indispensably bound to let them have. This trifling inconvenience was overweighed by his strict integrity, and the loving care which he bestowed on the estates themselves; more especially as the authors of the trust, being for the most part dead, did not expect to have any dealings with him themselves. No man living could manage estates like Mr. Ames. They grew in beauty side by side; they filled more than one home with glee, when the heirs finally got them; and alas! It may be said of many of them, that their graves are scattered far and wide.

Mr. Ames had been trustee of the Fenwick estate during the nonage of Leicester Fenwick. In process of time the original manor had been much diminished, just as the family had dwindled down to this Leicester, and… 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?