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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 Detective in America

Being off duty for the time, and the evening close and sultry, I was just settling myself in the open window of my lodgings, to smoke a quiet pipe, when another member of the force came to tell me that I was wanted by the superintendent. I went at once, as required.

“Banks,” said the superintendent to me, when I went into his room, and the door shut, “we have got a clue at last towards finding that man Jennings.”

“Indeed, sir, I am glad to hear you say so,” answered I, and I spoke the truth. Uncommonly glad I was, for our profession, like the rest, has its pride about it, and we had been a good deal twitted in the newspapers for not having succeeded, during seven months fruitless search, in securing that particular criminal. A shy bird was that Jennings. His doubles and twists had baffled some of the deepest heads in the police, and although we had often come upon his hiding place just after he had left it, we could never lay hands upon him. He was not a common offender. Well educated, and born in a very respectable station in life, he might have done well, and made an honest fortune, if he could but have kept straight. He was clever, and a first-rate accountant, and got the post of cashier to the –––Bank, while still quite a young man. I need hardly repeat his story—how he forged, and altered figures in passbooks, and played ducks and drakes with the floating balance of his employers. It is a common narrative. He went off at last, just when the detective grew certain, and carried with him nineteen thousand pounds, besides valuable papers and securities for a large amount. Every exertion was made, no expense was spared, and many times we seemed sure of him as he prowled up and down the country in various disguises; but at last the scent grew colder and… 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?