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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 Treasure of Rampsinitus

An article in the December number of Blackwood contains the following version of the old but excellent story of Herodotus, about the treasure of the Egyptian King, Rampsinitus:

“Rampsinitus had more money than he knew what to do with, so he ordered a stone building to be made, one of the walls of which was joined to the outer wall of his own dwelling. Wishing to make all safe, he ordered the building to be made without an entrance, so that the treasure being built in could never be got out again without pulling down the wall. The architect, however, thinking it a pity that the treasures should be of no use to anyone, and that the king would scarcely perceive a certain amount of subtraction, devised a stone in the wall, which was in appearance as fast as the rest, but really moved by a secret spring, and thus supplied his necessities from time to time from the king’s hoard. This went on for all his life. On his death bed the old scoundrel instead of repenting, let his two sons into the secret of the movable stone, consoling his conscience with the flattering unction that he was thereby securing a livelihood for his children without greatly hurting anyone.—The sons felt themselves in duty bound to help themselves, in accordance with their father’s wishes. But they were not so fortunate as he was, for one day the new king took it into his head to pull down the wall and have a look at his treasure. What was his astonishment when he saw that a good part of it had been spirited away. All the seals were safe, and there was no window, door, or chimney. He thought his father must have made a mistake as to the original amount so he plastered the hole up again, and opened it sometime after, a second time. The treasure had suffered a further diminution. However, he set man traps among the coffers, built the place up again, and found, not a man, but a man’s body, with… 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?