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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 Detective’s Experience

The Coral Necklace

“One night,” said Mr. F., “the beauty and grace of the city filled almost to suffocation the St. Charles Theatre. It was the occasion of a benefit—the recipient an actress of bewildering beauty and acknowledged talent. For weeks she had filled the vast theatre with an enthusiastic populace, who seemed eager to make her fete an ovation. Again and again did the curtain rise to their plaudits, and the weird gas-light of the proscenium flash on costly jewels and a form radiant with beauty. She had appeared that night as ‘Bianca’ and the Italian bride of Fazio had received from her an interpretation grand in its thrilling power, splendid in delineation. Passion—jealousy—tenderness—had in turn swayed and moved an audience who accepted from the artist a portraiture of emotions, vivid and life-like as reality. Catching the inspiration which moved her, their feelings were her feelings, and when the curtain descended upon the tragic mimic death scene, a shout of horror—cries of distress—showed how perfectly death was counterfeited in the convulsive struggle, the paling cheek, the glazing eye, the breaking heart.

“But was it a… 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?