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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

A work has recently been published in Paris entitled “Anecdotes of the French Police,” by M. Peuchet, keeper of the archives of the police of Paris. Some of the statements it contains are among the most extraordinary we ever read. We have been particularly struck by the adventures of a murderous female who assumed the name of Lady Guilfort: and availing ourselves of an able digest given in the Monthly Chronicle, we hasten to lay a part of her strange story before our readers.

It was during the reign of Louis XIV., that disappearances of individuals became alarmingly frequently in Paris. Awfully mysterious rumors on the subject were rife; and the lieutenant-general of the police, anxious to unravel the awful secret, employed an intelligent agent of the name of Lecoq for that purpose. It transpired that a female who sometimes pretended to be a polish princess, a Mademoiselle Jaborouski, and at others assumed the title of Lady Guilfort, was at the bottom of all. —Lecoq placed his son, superbly dressed, in her way. The female appeared, and he was allured to her house, where many had been drawn who were seen no more. He entered; the charms of the sorceress made him for a moment forget the part he had to act, and he gazed on her with the most fervent admiration. While in 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?