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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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From The Spectator

A Mysterious Crime

On Saturday, the 25^th of November, 1809, about noon, a carriage with two travellers arrived before the house of the postmaster of Perleberg, a little town close to the frontier of the Prussian dominions, on the highroad from Berlin to Hamburg. The travellers were the Hon. Benjamin Bathurst, Envoy Extraordinary of the British Government, on a secret mission to the court of Vienna, and then on his return to England; and Herr Krause, his German courier. They had no sooner alighted when Mr. Bathurst gave orders for the immediate continuation of the journey, and while the horses were harnessed to the carriage, went into the hostelry adjoining the post-office to take some refreshment. The meal was soon finished, but various arrangements, particularly the local verification of passports in the name of “Merchant Koch” and “Fischer,” protracted the departure of the travellers until a late hour. It was not till towards nine in the evening that the news at last arrived of the horses being about to be harnessed to the carriage. On receiving this welcome announcement, Mr. Bathurst left his room and… 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?