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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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Sir William and Lady Devereaux

by Thomas Waters

I very early acquired a habit of transcribing in durable ink, before I retired to rest, such pencil memoranda as I had jotted down during the day of singular incidents which I had myself observed or been told of. Standing alone, these were with out apparent significance, but might thereafter prove to be invaluable links in a tangled chain of circumstance. The date, locality, the names of informants or witnesses were strictly recorded. In ninety-nine cases of a hundred I simply had my trouble for my pains; but the hundredth, as in the case I am about to relate, abundantly compensated the lost labour.

The following sensation paragraph appeared in the columns of the Morning Post, in May, 1837: “The fashionable world is in a state of excitement relative to the sudden separation of Sir William Devereux and his lady, whose marriage was solemnized at St. James’s Church less than three weeks ago. The newly wedded pair were spending the bridal month, at the baronet’s seat, Westlands, Derbyshire, when the inexplicable event took place. One, and the most constant, rumour is that the baronet has been smitten with lunacy; and this would be a probable conjecture were it not that the lady has returned to her friends. A short time will, no doubt, clear up the mystery.”

The writer in the Post miscalculated the time which the unravelment of the mystery would consume. At 1east a month passed after the appearance of the newspaper paragraph before the following note reached Colonel Rowan, Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, into which body the Bow Street Runners had been absorbed: “Sir William Devereux presents his compliments to Colonel Rowan, and will esteem it a signal favour if he could be permitted to avail himself of the services of an intelligent and active detective officer. Sir William read an account in the papers at the time of… 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?