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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

Select Story

A Family Skeleton

A Detective’s Experience

There is an old brick mansion on Esplanade street, that stands a little way back from the Lanquette, and from its quaint construction, arrests the attention of the passer by. It was built near a century ago, and has a strange history yet fresh in the memory of many. Once the habitation of wealth and refinement, it has passed to far different uses. It is now a tenement house, and the wind and the storm make a solemn music in the ruinous rooms when the elements are at strife.

“It is connected,” said Mr. F, “with an event somewhat remarkable in my experience. It was then the residence of a Spanish family of great wealth and distinguished social position. Mr. I. and myself were strangers to them personally, although we were familiar with their reputation in the community. One night we were surprised by a visit from Antone Pallotta, the then head of the family which consisted of a nephew and daughter. Rumor had it, that the wife was yet living; but if so, it was in such retirement that even her name was never mentioned to strangers. For a year previous it had been observed a strict seclusion was maintained by the family. Some… 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?