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

Caught by a Thread

An English Detective’s Story

Some of our fellows who have been relating histories in your paper have informed you how they became detectives. All true, I believe; but there was no romance in my case. I took to the police force from liking. That being the case, and I being sober and industrious, I soon became a favorite, and rose rapidly, and at last was made a sergeant, receiving, besides my pay, what we call “intelligence money,” which makes a very nice addition to our salary. So here I am Sergeant Fox of the detective force, and having introduced myself, I will go at once into my story.

One day I happened to have a holiday, and took my wife and children to a village beyond Hornsey, where a friend of mine kept an old-fashioned public-house – a low, rambling, comfortable place, as snug as you could wish.

My old friend gave me a hearty welcome, and we had a glorious day. The children ran in the fields at the back of the house, and my wife and Mrs. Balmer – my friend’s wife sat in the bar parlor, while Balmer and myself smoked our pipes in the arbor at the bottom of the garden.

Balmer had given us a warm welcome, but for all that I saw there was something the matter with both him and his wife. For instance when we were at dinner and tea, I noticed that now and then they would pause in the conversation and listen as if they expected to hear something. Once during the latter meal Balmer jumped up and hurried out of the room; but he returned almost immediately, and saying quietly to his wife, “It’s nothing, my dear,” resumed the conversation as usual. This, of course, aroused my curiosity, and I determined to know what the matter was before I left.

“This is a fine old place, Harry,” I said, as I puffed at my pipe.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “I like it very much, so does my wife. Still not as much as I… 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?