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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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The Bride's Diamonds

Clever Detective Work Performed by the Jeweler's Daughter

Diamonds big and bright—unset diamonds that shone and gleamed and changed to all manner of colors as Mr. Mulford moved the velvet tray about before his customers.

They were sitting at a table in the little room at the back of the store, the jeweler and rich Mr. and Mrs. Carberry. Mr. Carberry had bought his wife’s wedding-ring of Mr. Mulford the day he opened the store twenty-five years before, and had been a regular customer ever since, and a successful broker may be a very good customer indeed.

As for the store, it was much finer than it was in those days. It had larger windows and better stock—more carriages stopped before the door. Neither of the men had any thing to complain of as far as fortune went.

“Well,” said Mr. Carberry at last, “I think we’ve settled the matter. The stones are chosen and the settings selected, and I fancy Bessy will have as pretty a wedding-present as need be. We want to please her; she has pleased us, and daughters don’t always do that.”

“No. they do not, Mr. Carberry,” said Mr. Mulford, with a little sigh.

“You don’t mean that your little girl—” began Mr. Carberry, and stopped short with: “I beg your pardon.”

“Oh, no excuse,” said Mulford, blandly. “You’ve known my Esther since she was a baby and you know she has no mother to advise her. Esther is a dear girl, but I had ambitions for her. I wanted her to marry well— there was young Vinton; why, he went wild over her.”

“Any man might,” said Carberry, “I always think of the Turkish saying: ‘She must be a jeweler’s daughter, for she has… 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?