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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 Diamond Necklace

by Jonathan Fallis

One of the most singular circumstances recorded in history, is the affair of the ‘Diamond Necklace,’ which occurred a short time previous to the breaking out of the great French Revolution. We take the following account of it from Abbot’s ‘Life of Maria Antoinette,’ recently published by the Harpers:

About this…[line missing]…though apparently trivial, involved consequences of the most momentous importance. It was merely the fraudulent purchase of a necklace, by a profligate woman, in the name of the queen. The circumstances were such as to throw all France into agitation, and Europe was full of the story.

“Mind that miserable affair of the necklace,” said Talleyrand; “I should be nowise surprised if it should overturn the French monarchy.”—To understand this mysterious occurrence, we must first allude to two very important characters implicated in the conspiracy.

“The Cardinal de Rohan, though one of the highest dignitaries of the church, and of the most illustrious rank, was a young man of vain and shallow mind, of great profligacy of character, and perfectly prodigal in squandering in ostentatious pomp, all the revenues within his reach.—He had been sent an ambassador to the Court of Vienna. Surrounding himself with a retinue of spendthrift gentlemen, he endeavored to dazzle the Austrian capital with more than regal magnificence. Expending six or seven hundred thousand dollars in the course of a few months, he soon became involved in inextricable embarrassments. In the extremity of his distress, he took advantage of his official station, and engaged in smuggling with so much effrontery, that he almost inundated the Austrian capital with French goods. Maria Theresa was extremely displeased; and, without reserve, expressed her strong disapproval of his conduct, both as 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?