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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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A Real Romance

A Tale of Stage Robbers and Opened Mail Bags

The following is a true and romantic story of an old and worthy citizen of Missouri, and who was widely known throughout the State in former times:

Fifty years ago one Dr. Morris was Postmaster in the mountain town of Christiansburg, Southwestern Virginia, where the writer hereof was born. Webster Houston, a youth, was his deputy, and he was so intelligent and faithful that he was entrusted with almost the sole management of the office. This town was on the stage road from Richmond to North Carolina, and not far from the border. Newburn, thirteen miles south of it, was the next post-town on the route. As the mail had been frequently robbed somewhere between Richmond and Raleigh, the department at Washington sent out a detective to discover the thief. He went to Raleigh, got some bank bills, mostly of the Bank of North Carolina, marked them, put them in a letter directed to himself at Richmond, and started northward in the same stage coach with the letter. There were no envelopes or mucilage in those old days. Letters were always written on large double sheets, then folded and sealed with a wafer under the outer leaf. The wafer was about the size of a nickel. Each State had its own bank, and the paper money of each State was at a discount in every other State. After passing each postoffice on his way North, the detective stopped the coach, showed his authority, opened the mail bag and examined the letter to see if it had been opened. After leaving Newburn the detective took out 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?