The News

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

Mrs. Cudmuffle’s Ring

by Judge Clark

“You’re very thoughtless—very thoughtless, indeed!” muttered Mr. Cudmuffle, with a disturbed glance at the dimpled hand whose taper fingers were busy finding the place in the family prayer-book. “Upon my word, it’s too bad!”

The hand was Mr. Cudmuffle’s wife’s; but fastidious in the matter of wifely charms as husbands are prone to become in time, it would have puzzled any one—not in the secret—to tell what there was in the fair object of Mr. Cudmuffle’s glance to evoke criticism—especially just when the Rev. Mr. Callowdown was clearing his throat to begin the evening service, and Mr. Cudmuffle’s thoughts should have been fixed on other things.

“Where’s your ring?” whispered Mr. Cudmuffle.

“I—I must have forgotten it on my dressing-case,” stammered Mrs. Cudmuffle, confused and blushing.

Had all the possible sins of omission been comprised in that one, Mr. Cudmuffle would hardly have felt more shocked and indignant. The ring in question—a wedding gift to his spouse—had cost, we are afraid to guess how much, —though it is safe to say the amount had since been saved, several times over, by the system of pinching economy rigidly enforced by Mr. Cudmuffle in the matter of his wife’s expenditures. That she should wear the costly ornament on all public occasions—especially at church—was a point he insisted on, not only in dutiful recognition of his rare munificence, but as a becoming tribute to his state and dignity. When Mrs. Cudmuffle’s hand supported… 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?