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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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A Detective's Story

(May 19, 1885)

I always had a hankering after a mystery, and this often served me a good turn in cases where all my skill as a detective was called in. I don’t speak of my skill in a vain sense at all—but as a detective was reckoned a right smart chap. At the time when the mysterious murder of Mr. Loring occurred in the town of L—, which was my native place, I was down South engaged in an affair of much mystery, and requiring the utmost perseverance as well as delicacy, in its treatment. Well, we were successful, my partner and me, but it cost me the worst attack of chills and fever that I’d ever had. I was so bad I had to lay off from business for a while and go home to recruit.

When I got to L— I heard all the particulars about young Allan—Will Allan—having been arrested on suspicion of this murder, an’ how that plucky little girl married him in prison, an’ then set herself to find proofs of his innocence. I admired this little woman. I tell you, I felt like thanking Heaven for making such little ones, an’ I’d just liked to have kissed her hand, if it hadn’t been too great a privilege. Well, it was all over when I got home, the trial and all that. Will Allan was acquitted, an’ the young couple were off on their wedding tour. But it turned out when Mr. Loring’s will was read, that he had left a handsome sum of money to Mr. Allan. Well, this news had no sooner… 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?