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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 Two Sisters; Or, the Avenger

by Allan Pinkerton

CHAPTER I.

IN the early part of April, 1851, I was attending to some business for the United States Treasury Department, under orders from Mr. Guthrie, the Secretary of the Treasury at that time. Having no one to assist me, I was obliged to do an immense amount of work, and to take advantage of every unoccupied moment, to rest and sleep. I was not, then, living in Chicago, but was temporarily boarding at the Sherman House, in that city, my own home being at Dundee, in Kane County, Illinois. One evening, I had retired early, exhausted by a hard day’s work, and had just fallen into a sound sleep, when I was awakened by my old friend, William L. Church, the sheriff of Cook County, Illinois. He was accompanied by two other gentlemen, whom he introduced to me, as soon as I could make a hasty toilet and admit them to my room. One was Deputy-Sheriff Green, of Coldwater, Michigan, and the other, William Wells, of Quincy, a small town about six miles north of Coldwater. Mr. Church said that he wished me to listen to the story which Mr. Wells had to tell, and to give my services to aid in capturing two of the worst villains that ever went unhung, as well as to save their victims from their clutches.

Mr. Wells seemed to be about twenty-one years old, and had an erect carriage, which gave him a more manly and determined look than is usual in young men of his age. Drawing around the stove, we listened to his sad, sad story, which, at times, threw him into fits of violent passion, and at others, overwhelmed him with grief. I shall not attempt to tell the story in the disconnected manner in which… 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?