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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

Following Up a Clew

by Joseph Montet

On the day when she felt her end approaching and that life was slowly leaving her, just as the oil in her china lamp gently sank on a winter’s night, Mlle. Aglae put her skinny hands upon the head of her pug Mirza and shed copious tears after which, turning to her faithful servant, Gertrude, she said in a weak, sad voice:

“I am leaving you my fortune, Gertrude, but on condition that, when I am gone, you will take care of Mirza as I have done. The poor creature will need all your affection to console her for my loss. Swear to me that death alone will separate you from her!”

Gertrude swore on all that she held most dear, that is upon the remains of her parrot Leocadie, which she had seen sadly depart life from the effects of a too rash indulgence in parsley, and which the skill of a taxidermist had enabled her to preserve, upon a gilded perch, with wide-spread wings, in ecstatic attitude of a parrot winging its flight to a better world.

Mlle. Aglae died peacefully after this, for she knew well that the pledge would be sacredly kept. Her confidence was not misplaced, as Gertrude was a woman of her word, and the whole town of Briqueville was edified by the conscientious zeal she… 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?