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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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Chapters from the Note-Book of a Deceased Lawyer

No. I.

It has frequently occurred to me that if any member of the Bar, who has been for a few years in practice in our criminal courts, possessing the not uncommon qualities of a moderate understanding, a mind open to conviction, and a tolerable share of attention to the cases which occur, would communicate to the world the result of his experience; he would do more to enlighten the public mind upon the nature and practical operation of that most valued of our institutions, the Trial by Jury, than could be effected in any other mode. No man can have attended, even for a single day, either as a juror or a witness, in any one of our courts, whether civil or criminal, without having been struck, if he be of an observant habit, by verdicts utterly at variance with the facts upon which those verdicts have been founded. Every man must have seen, and must be able to bear testimony to, some case, in which the result has been unsatisfactory to his own mind; nor can there be many who have retired home to meditate on the scenes they have witnessed, who have not felt some emotion of regret at the success of guilt, or some pang of horror at the conviction of innocence: but few, very few, save only those who are most familiar with our courts of justice, can form any just idea how frequently both these cases really occur. It has been my lot to have attended, for many years of my life, no matter in what capacity, in most of the courts in this kingdom. I have witnessed, and been personally concerned in, cases so singular in their nature, so unexpected in their termination, so totally at variance with all that could have been predicted of them, that, though in the silent lapse of time they have passed by and are… 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?