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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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Haunted House

A Detective's Story

Written for the New York Clipper
by the Author of Susie Knight

The pretty city of S— was infested with a gang of burglars. The local police was entirely inadequate to the task of ferreting them out. House after house was entered, the valuables abstracted, and still suspicion could be fastened on no one.

Pending this state of affairs the authorities sent to New York for a couple of detectives to come up and aid them in the work of catching the thieves.

Ned Halsey and I were dispatched. We thought the job would occupy two or three days—a week at the farthest; for you must know that we have a rather poor opinion of the constabulary force of the interior, and vote any man a fool who can’t catch a robber between two Sundays.

We didn’t care to publish our arrival, we came in the character of speculators bent on purchasing produce for the New York market.

We saw the Chief of Police soon after we reached… 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?

Select Story

Haunted House

A Detective's Story

Written for the New York Clipper by the Author of Susie Knight

Written for the New York Clipper
by the Author of Susie Knight