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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

Select Story

Y. Zimmermann

by Richard Anderson

It was in the summer of 1863 that I first became acquainted with Mr. Zimmermann. The acquaintance never ripened into friendship. Just as we were beginning to know each other fully, his naturally retiring disposition asserted itself, and the treasures of a remarkable experience were only partially revealed to me. He was a man of decided character and originality, of whom many intelligent persons would be glad to know more.

The circumstances under which I met him were very peculiar. So far as they only concern Y. Z. and myself, I will relate them without reserve; but there are “reasons of state,” or reasons of city rather, for being a little indefinite in regard to some of the persons and places connected with the story.

At the time I have mentioned (1863), I was private secretary to the mayor of ––––, one of the largest seaboard cities in the United States. Whatever importance the office had, was due mainly to the war in which the country was then engaged. The mayor was expected to keep a fatherly eye on all his patriotic subjects who went forth to do battle or draw their bounties. If Mrs. Moroney failed to receive her letters and remittances regularly from Private Moroney, she came to “His Honor” about it; and when an aggravated case of neglect was shown, an official letter was sent to the captain of the company in which Private P. Moroney was serving, inquiring after the welfare of that item to the credit of the city’s quota. Or if that noble defender himself became anxious about his family, he employed his leisure time in writing letters to the mayor. Moroney, having been a member of several organizations which annually brandished a dinner knife in the… 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?