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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

Elöise Bienaimé

by W.

At the head of the semi-spiral stairs, which were of dark wood, protected by a balustrade of the same material, I was shown through an arched doorway on the right, and ushered into a small antechamber, furnished like a boudoir, richly corniced, frescoed, and hung with small Dutch paintings. Madame Bienaimé entered with as little noise as a ghost; the door closed, and we were alone.

“I am conversing with Mr. ––––?” she asked, seating herself upon a fauteuil, and signing me to do the same.

I bowed assent.

“You will excuse the liberty I have taken,” she continued, speaking with the slightest possible accent, “in sending for you. I had a reason.”

The impression was so novel and unexpected, Madame appeared so serious and even severe, I was silent and astonished. Can this, thought I, be the reputed Ninon, the gay and dissipated Elöise Bienaimé––the intimate of Madame Sand, and the patron saint of the artists? Oh! world, what a liar art thou!

The woman before me might have reached her fortieth year, retaining the beauty and freshness of twenty-one, with the bearing of a matron. Her cheeks were not sullied by paint, and her chestnut hair fell in a shower of natural ringlets over a neck and shoulders snowy white. In her eyes––large, soft, and of a changeable hue––lay the possibility of every expression. “She is an actress,” I thought. “We have our scene to enact. The rôle of Madame is dignified and impressive––mine is to be impressible.” The parts were distributed, and the play began.

She… 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?