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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 Handsome Stranger

by Mrs. M. A. Denison

Chapter I.

"So polished!" “So handsome!” “So fascinating!” “Pray who is he?” “And his name—?” “Is Edwin Gray.”

“How sweet! Just like music!”

These and kindred exclamations formed the staple of conversation, at the moment, at a birthday party, as the subject of so much comment moved quietly away down the long, well-lighted, well-furnished apartment.

The waltzing was over; the rich, softly undulating waves of Strauss’s music had subsided upon the shore of comparative silence.

“Oh, Eva, he was quite taken with you!” said Amy Pendleton, in her quick, straightforward English. “He told me your hair was the color of beaten gold.”

“Did he? Well, he spoke of your eyes, and compared them to heaven’s own blue.”

“And he said Kate’s smile was the sweetest he had ever seen,” said Lu Baker. “I wonder what be praised about me?” she added, with a queer little grimace.

“Your hands, my dear. For whiteness and symmetry, they were like lilies.”

“Then we are, every one of us, charming in his eyes! Oh, how delightful!” said Eva Warren, the brightest and wittiest of the four young girls gathered at this birthday party. “Can’t we conglomerate our charms some way, and make one perfect whole, worthy of worship by this knight of the fathomless eyes?”

“By-the-way, he has wonderful eyes, hasn’t he?” said Amy Pendleton. “Do you know, I scarcely dare to look in them, for fear I shall have to take up with the old strain, slightly altered:

“‘Oh my heart, my heart is breaking,

For the love of Edwin Gray.’”

“Don’t be silly, Amy,” exclaimed Eva.

“I was never wise,” was the retort; “and for that very reason, I shall be singled out by this paragon, see if I’m not. And then, I shall smile and smile on him, till… 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?