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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

Select Story

A Daring Robbery

Mrs. Fitch’s Necklace Stolen

Operation of the Detectives

Quick Capture of the Thieves

Recovery of the Valuable Treasure

The Exchange of Satchels—The Officers Alarmed—The Plan of Their Movements—Distress of Mrs. Fitch—How the Arrest was Made—Identification of the Robbers—Statement of the Prisoner—The Necklace at Galt’s, &c.

Last evening, Lieutenant and Mrs. Fitch, who have been spending a few weeks in St. Louis, visiting General and Mrs. Sherman, arrived in Washington on the 9:10 train, and driving from the depot direct to Willard’s, were assigned to parlor No. 12. Immediately on going to their room, Mrs. Fitch made the discovery of the loss of her diamond necklace, the royal present from the Khedive of Egypt. Thinking the simplest way of transporting the valuable jewel would be the most likely way of keeping it safe and from the clutches of thieves, she locked the necklace in a common traveling satchel, made of heavy green cloth and bound with brown leather. It was her purpose soon as she arrived at the hotel to take out the necklace and send it to the office to be locked up in the safe. Her feelings can be better imagined than… 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?