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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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Extracts from a Lawyer’s Portfolio

[by Anna Jane Vardill]

From the European Magazine, for June, 1818

No parts of our laws implies a more becoming consciousness of human judgement’s fallibility, than the cautions and deliberate procedure required in ascertaining mental disease, and surrendering a supposed lunatic to the custody of his kindred. A remarkable instance of this kind fell under my own observation. —I was on my way to visit an uncle resident on the remotest coast of Cornwall, and believed myself very near my journey’s end, when the stage-coach driver admitted a stranger to fill a seat which had been vacated. The other three passengers were busily engaged in a discussion on lawful and unlawful duels, and referring occasionally to a pamphlet printed in 1632, on occasion of the Battle awarded in the preceding year in the Court of Chivalry on an Appeal of Treason by Lord Rea against Mr. Ramsay. Then followed an attempt to trace the Writ of Appeal and Wager of Battle from the practice of Turkey, and its prevalence in England till the third year of Henry VII. But our new companion, whose dress was very little superior to a disbanded seaman, suddenly joined the conversation: “Gentlemen,” he began, in a stern voice, “modern philosophers never read, therefore they are always making discoveries—Did Blackstone see any barbarity in this mode of satisfying justice, or did the Archbishop of Toledo disdain to witness such a combat in the most religious court of Europe?”—This extraordinary combination of authorities made one of the party smile, though his professional petulance was stirred by the implied comparison between our English oracle and an old Spanish… 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?