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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 Victory

A Strange Crime and Its Solution

The town of Doncaster, in England, is famous as being the scene from year to year of the celebrated St. Leger race. Ordinarily it is a staid, dull enough place, with its chief business on market days, when the neighboring farmers and families throng the town. During the race week, however, it presents a lively aspect being literally crowded with visitors from all parts of the world. The hotels and inns are filled, private boarding-houses find all the guests they can accommodate, and many families vacate their residences entirely, renting them for ten days or so to wealthy visitors who pay a large sum for their exclusive use. Among the visitors to the town during the races are multitudes of the criminal class, who flock thither from London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow, Dublin and all the large centers, for the purpose of pursuing their nefarious calling. From all the places named likewise come a body of police detectives on purpose to take care of thieves and rogues with whom for the most part they are well acquainted.

In the first place, the railroad depots are watched, and all recognized criminals are captured there and returned by the next train to the place whence they came; but, in spite of this admirable scheme, thousands of them are smuggled into the town, some of them taking up their abode there long before the races open, and others landing at roadside stations a few miles distant, and proceeding to their destination by secret paths or by night. Many of them also adopt clever disguises, and thus evade the vigilance of the officer of the law.

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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?