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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 Pretty Thief

by James Dabney

“Have I had much experience with thieves? If you mean professional thieves, I have, sir. I don’t see much of the petty cases that come up before the police magistrates, as they are out of my line.”

So spoke my friend, Officer If--, who had been for many years one of the detectives of the great city in which I resided. He had frequently told me of his adventures in the discharge of the duties of his profession, some of which I have already told before the readers of this journal.

“Yes,” he continued, “I’ve seen a great deal of thieves in my day, and I give it all as my candid opinion, sir, that the worst characters of this class are women. They’re the hardest to deal with, from the fact that they can lie with a better grace than a man, and are so quick to remind you of the fact that you are a man and more powerful than they. That you find yourself almost ashamed to proceed against them as harshly as they deserve. Then again, they are far more ingenious than man, and are much harder to entrap, for they can baffle by their arts and tricks the most complete detective of the whole force. I remember one case of female dexterity which came under my notice. I mean that I arrested the woman after the robbery was committed.

“You know the firm of Grindem and Squeeze, of this city, sir. They are extensive retail dry goods dealers, and their trade is principally with the wealthy, fashionable class of citizens. They have the reputation of being the keenest business men in the place, and their clerks are regarded as among the smartest and hardest to deceive of any in the whole trade. Indeed, it is said they will not keep a clerk who is not pretty well up to their standard of shrewdness. Well, it is to show you how one of these very smart clerks was taken in, that I am about to relate this story.

“One morning Messrs. Grindem and Squeeze received 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?