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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 Detective’s Oath

I chanced to be in the New York Court of General Session, a good many years ago, when two professional thieves were being tried for burglary.

There was but little doubt of their guilt; but they had secured excellent legal services, the actual evidence against them was very slender, and there was every promise of their being acquitted, when the prosecuting attorney suddenly called, as a witness for the state, the name of Patrick Harnden, the mere mention of which caused an abrupt and striking overshadowing of the criminals’ prospect.

They both lost countenance – their counsel looked black; and as the bearer of the name, a powerful, well knit young man, with a pale face, and iron jaw, and a stern relentless eye – stepped upon the stand, and in hard tones and in simple language, gave the evidence that secured their conviction beyond a doubt, they turned white with terror, and trembling as though confronted with a ghostly Nemesis of all their crimes, and harkening to the accusing words of Fate itself:

“These are professional thieves; they are guilty of this particular charge for which they are now of trial, as my evidence will prove, and they are the last of the ‘Silver Gang, the members of which I have haunted, tracked, shadowed, and hounded down, one by one, for years.”

Such was the opening sentence of witness Harnden’s testimony, which, in addition to securing that particular conviction, displayed throughout a certain sleuth hound tendency and a deadliness of purpose on the part of the speaker that was quite remarkable.

After the prisoners had been sentenced to heavy penalties McArdle, the veteran detective, who sat at the reporters’ table, whispering in my ear:

“I knew it was all up with those fellows as soon as Harnden took the stand. Did you notice the crushing effect of his mere presence upon them? He is the bete noir, the incubus, the… 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?