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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 Hunt on the Highway

From the Journal of an English Police Officer

There was a shrewd robber somewhere. The farmhouses were robbed; shops were robbed; the tills of the bars at the wayside inns were robbed; and the people had their pockets picked.—All this happened in the region of the country between Sidney and Lowstone—not a field of vast extent—and yet the robber or robbers could not be found. Officers had searched in every direction, and several suspicious looking individuals were apprehended; but the real culprit still remained at large. One day the mail was robbed, and on the next a man had his pocket picked of five hundred pounds, while riding in the stagecoach—for my narrative dates back to the old coaching days. The money had been carried in his breast pocket, and he knew that it was stolen from him while he was enjoying a bit of a doze on the road.

I had been confined to the house by a severe cold for several days, and was not fit to go out now; but as this matter was becoming so serious, I felt it my duty to be on the move, and accordingly I fortified my throat and breast with warm flannel, and set forth. I had no settled plan in my mind, for I had not yet been upon the road, and was not thoroughly “posted up.” A ride of five miles brought me to Sidney, and thence I meant to take coach to Lowstone, where Sam Stickney, one of the shrewdest of men, lived. Stickney had already been on the search, and I wished to consult him before making any decided movement. I reached Sidney at half past five in the morn, and the coach left at six. Lowstone was sixty miles distant, so I had a good ride before me. During the early part of the day I rode upon the box with the driver and from him I gained considerable information touching the various robberies that had been committed. He was forced to admit that several people had been robbed in his stage, though he declared he couldn’t… 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?