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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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Lady Guilfort

The following story is derived from the authentic work of M. Peuchet, Les Archives de la Police de Paris. The period to which the narrative refers is that of the reign of Louis XIV.

Monsieur de la Regnie had filled for several years, to the general satisfaction, the functions of Lieutenant-General of Police, when, on a sudden, terror spread itself through Paris in consequence of the extraordinary disappearance of several persons. In the course of four months, twenty-six young men, the youngest seventeen, and the oldest twenty-five years of age, had been spirited away from their inconsolable families. The most extravagant and contradictory rumors were in circulation upon the subject, particularly in the Faubourg St. Antoine, which had to deplore the loss of four or five young men, the sons of rich and respectable upholsterers residing in that quarter of the city. Among other gossiping stories whispered about upon the subject, it was pretended that a princess who was suffering from a dangerous liver complaint, had been advised by some foreign charlatan or quack doctor, to make use from time to time, as a means of cure, of a bath of human blood, and that the unfortunate missing persons has been immolated for the purpose. Another equally horrible surmise was, that they had been made away with by the Jews, who, out of hatred and derision of the crucified Messiah, were accustomed to put Christians to death upon the Cross. Fortunately for the poor Jews, this… 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?