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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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How I Captured the Burglars

I had said that I did not believe in any danger from burglars, but after the worry of the day and the fatigue of my unwonted vigil, I myself began to feel a little dull and out of sorts, and found myself dwelling on the possibilities of our house being attempted. We were a family of women exclusively; our gardener came daily from the village, and did not sleep on the premises, although, in any case, an old man would have been a poor help in danger. The game keeper and his son were our nearest protectors, and I must own that I rather wished their cottage was nearer.

“I am getting as silly as Maggie,” I said to myself, as I resolutely drew the bedclothes over my ears to stop myself listening for imaginary voices. “I do think fancies are infectious.’’ And so moralizing, I fell asleep.

I suppose I had slept some hours, when I was awakened by a terrified whisper at my ear, “Miss Jane, Miss Jane, they are trying our back door!”
I started up, and beheld the nurse and nursery maid in a strange and wondrous dishabille, standing by my bed.

“It’s gospel truth what Maria says, miss,” gasped the nurse, a portly woman, who looked white with terror: “you can see them with your own eyes out of the day nursery window—two horrid-looking ruffians as ever came to murder poor, innocent women. Ugh! ugh!”

“Don’t wake your mistress, woman!” I cried. “In her delicate state, it might nearly kill her.”

“That’s what I said, miss,” struck in Maria. “I says, come to Miss Jane, she ain’t afraid of anything.”

This estimate of my courage was very flattering, but at the present moment hardly true, for I did feel terribly afraid. My only hope was that the women were mistaken.

“Come and see for yourself, miss,” sobbed the nurse. “I had got up to give baby his bottle, and went into the day nursery to fetch the matches, which Maria had forgot, and there, under… 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?