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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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Aunt Prue’s Adventure

When I was a gal—don’t you go asking me how long ago that was, ’cause I aint agoin’ to tell you; so there now. When I was a gal I went over to Uncle Adoniram’s to pay a visit. It was in a lonesome sort of place, and I hadn’t been there before, for they had just bought it, and I wasn’t a great hand to find my way about alone. But, one day, aunt was sick and couldn’t go down to the village to do the trading, and she jest said to me:

“Prue, you take Blackberry, he’s easy riding, and go down to the store and order these things that I’ve made a list of, and ask ’em to send ’em over tomorrow, for your uncle has taken the wagon, and I can’t bring ’em home myself, and we’re out of ham, and cheese, and molasses, and sugar, and tea, and soft-soap, and we haint got much pepper nor thyme nor mustard in the house, neither.”

“Yes, auntie,” says I, “I’ll go. And while I’m there, can’t I stop and take tea with Camilla Smith? I’ve promised a long time.”

Says aunt:

“Well, yes, you may, Prudence; but, for mercy’s sake, don’t get belated. You mightn’t be able to find your way after dark.”

Well, I promised. I went out to the stable, and Cousin Job fixed auntie’s side-saddle on Blackberry for me, and mounted me up. I don’t say he didn’t kiss me, for Job thought heaps of me, and I thought lots of Job, and uncle wasn’t against cousins marrying, though pa was.

Anyhow we had a little talk, and Job said he never saw a girl look so pretty on horseback, and I rode away jest as happy as a queen. I… 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?