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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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Vidocq and the Forger

Vidocq was an old man, and his personal qualities always struck me as those which were the most adapted to the office he had so long filled in Paris. But, after sitting with him for some time, I began to estimate the man more truly, and drew a much more accurate measure of his qualifications for it. His gray eye was as quick and as stealthy as a cat’s. Did you look away from him for a minute, when your glance again fell upon him, his eyes were taking your mental measure.

No sooner, however, did yours meet them, than they roamed away into a purely indifferent speculation. Scarcely had you become interested in anything your friend was saying, than they were again fixed upon you, scrutinizing your thoughts, and examining your expression.

Of course, he could have no idea that either my companion or myself were pickpockets, and yet I had a very uncomfortable impression that he was thinking so, and meditating on the pleasure which he would have experienced in arresting us. This, naturally enough, could not conduce to make me feel very agreeable towards him.

It was as a student of human nature, however, that I visited him. Consequently, my legs did not run away with me, although it must be confessed that once or twice my mind felt very much inclined to prompt an immediate evasion.

His attire was as singular as his person. In addition to the scratch-wig which I have previously alluded to, and which was, if my memory serves me rightly, colored of a reddish tint, he wore a brown dress-coat, cut in a very large, loose, and baggy style.

Such a coat was it, as I never could have drempt of a French tailor’s perpetrating. It was almost new, but looked as if it had not been brushed for a week. Probably it may not have been from the time he first ordered it. A large buff waistcoat, as loose and almost as large gray trousers, cut with the same… 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?