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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

A Tragedy

There is a low ruined cottage on St. Anthony street, where the moss grows over the roofing and the rickety doors hang by broken hinges. Dust and age have hid the floor from sight, and the decaying walls are damp and mouldy. Only one room is habitable, and that shelters an old woman, gray and decrepid. Sitting on a low stool she mutters a lullaby—an old time song. Age had deprived her of reason, but the sorrow a tragedy wrought is yet fresh at her heart.

Twenty years ago she was beautiful. The olive cheeks were radiant, and the glorious eyes flashed the triumph of a belle. Tall and slender, exquisitely formed, with rich andalusian type of beauty, it is no wonder that she reigned regally over many hearts. At that time no society in the world was more brilliant than ours. Wealth and hospitality went hand in hand, and the most refined and elegant in the land did homage to the beauty of New Orleans. To be star regnant of such society involved more than physical loveliness, and Blanco Castello had all the graces that intellect bestows.

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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?