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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

Select Story

Our Murderer

Or, The Sea Gives Up Its Dead

by Barbara Thorne

It is often asserted by the opponents of spiritualism that the occult science has never been of any practical use in the detection of crime. One case that came under my own observation, however, controverts this statement. I have a morbid habit of imagining the crimes that certain persons of my acquaintance might commit, if given the temptation and opportunity. No doubt this mental peculiarity of mind is due to my occupation, that of a detective.

I had been sent to Paris upon business connected with a bank robbery, and having no charge upon my return voyage was at liberty to employ my leisure time in studying my fellow-passengers.

I was especially fascinated by a young husband and wife, of whom I could not learn much except that they were New-Yorkers and bore the name of Tracy.

Though I never exchanged a dozen words with the lady, yet she won my deepest sympathy, from a certain wistful expression of her beautiful eyes—a look which I imagine often characterizes a neglected wife.

The gentleman was always affable, and a general favorite; still, I could not rid myself of the conviction that he would help his gentle, delicate wife out of the world if he had any powerful incentive to the crime.

European voyages were rather longer in those days than they are now. Ours was at first a prosperous one.… 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?