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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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The Arrest

[Translated for Every Saturday from L’Événement]

Ah! M. Vibert!” exclaimed the porter, as the agent of the secret police returned home. “There is a letter for you!”

Vibert took the letter. Its printed heading showed that it came from the Commissary of Police of the 1st Ward. It ran as follows:—

My Dear Vibert,—While you were employed in this office, your attention was called one day during my absence to an escaped convict named Langlade, and to a tall, red-haired girl known by the nickname ‘Soleil Couchant.’ The Prefecture of Police has requested me to furnish some information about these parties, who were believed to be in England, who are in Paris, but who have heretofore escaped, notwithstanding all the efforts made to arrest them. I know nobody but you who can give information about these two people. Will you be so good as to call at the Prefecture of Police tomorrow morning and give it all the information you possess?

Your old master,
Dorécu

“I will go tomorrow morning,” said Vibert to himself, as he put the letter in his pocket and went upstairs.

He went the next morning to the Prefecture of Police, and was shown into the office of one of the superintendents. While he was waiting his turn to speak to the Superintendent, he overheard the following dialogue between the former and an agent of the secret police.

“And so Soleil Couchant has not only been arrested… 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?