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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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[Written for The Flag of Our Union]

Our Lodger

by Theodore Arnold

The year before I was admitted to the bar I spent at Mrs. Martha Sanborn’s, on Home street. It was one of the pleasantest houses I ever lived in. In the first place, Mrs. Sanborn was a good, motherly body, a capital housekeeper, and not at all gasping, nor hard, nor suspicious. If any of her boarders or lodgers were behindhand in paying, she would wait a little, as long as it was convenient, then ask for money in a pleasant, kind way, just as if all had the same interests, and she was sure that her family meant to do the right thing by her.

“You see I have my rent to pay to-morrow,” she would say; “and you wouldn’t want me to be a discredit to you. When a housekeeper doesn’t pay her bills, it reflects on her boarders. Don’t you see some way to get it?”

Not a cross word, not a hint that couldn’t be forgotten, but was left to rankle. And to give her family due credit, she seldom had anything of the kind to say. They all did well by her; and not a New Year’s, Christmas or birthday passed but she got a present from each one; and not one left her without a farewell gift. It was really touching to see any one of her boarders go off. I well remember when Tom Kane went. For two days before the good lady could hardly eat a mouthful, and her eyes would fill with tears every time she looked at Tom. He had been with her three years, and was going to California. She looked over and mended his clothes, she helped pack his trunk, and put a little Bible in it. With her name on the fly-leaf… 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?