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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

The Magistrate Outwitted

It is necessary for the purposes of this narrative, that I should take the reader into custody, and carry him before Mr. Oldbeke, the stipendiary magistrate of a nameless city.

A police court is not a savory place at the best of times; but on a warm, wet, foggy November morning, when the great unwashed is present in unusual numbers, on account of the Irish row that has taken place the night before, and the atmosphere teems with odors, among which the concentrated essence of American overshoes and wet cotton umbrellas is the least offensive,—it is about as repulsive a spot as a good walker could find in a day’s march. Still, comfortless as is the accommodation, close and foul as is the air, there is that to be seen and learned by anyone who will keep his mind’s eye open, in a police court, which will more than requite him for what he may undergo in acquiring the information. The incident I have to recount is a very simple one, but still it conveys a lesson that may be useful.

Ha! silence in court! Here comes the magistrates. That kind-looking middle aged gentleman, who takes his place in the centre of the bench, is Mr. Oldbeke. Supporting him, on his right and left, sit two city justices. Below them, at the head of the table, where the attorneys who defend prisoners are assembling, sits their clerk, hotly besieged by a crowd of men, women, and children, more or less bruised and battered, who are applying for warrants and summonses. One by one the applicants come forward, and state their grievances. The first wants a warrant against her husband, for breaking her arm with a poker. The next demands a summons against John Smith, for kicking his (the speaker’s) little boy down stairs. The next seeks to take criminal proceedings against Anne Jones, for “using her shamefully” and is followed by Anne herself in the flesh (and very fleshy she is,) who makes a counter-… 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?