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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 Counterfeit Bill

by Amy Randolph

“It is too bad!” sobbed Kitty Eldon, with burning cheeks and a throbbing heart, “it is too bad! and I won’t endure it another day—no, not another moment!”

Kitty was a plump, chubby-cheeked damsel, with a profusion of dimples, and large, wistful-looking brown eyes—a girl whose face and physique clearly betokened quick passions and a warm, tropical nature, very evidently in a state of revolt just at the present moment.

“Kitty!” remonstrated a matronly personage, who had just entered, and stood with a troubled face watching the busy hands and flushed temples of the girl, “Kitty, you surely are not going away?”

“Yes, I am going away, Aunt Myra,” said Kitty, tossing back the chestnut curls with a defiant motion, “I will not spend another night under a roof where my letters are intercepted, and—and—”

But, my child, your uncle acts solely for your good. Duval Martyn bears no enviable character, and— “

“I will not hear him aspersed!” indignantly interrupted Kitty, tying on her bonnet with nervous fingers. “I shake the dust of your threshold off my feet henceforth. I chose to take my own pathway in the world. I would sooner earn my bread as governess or ladies’ maid than be longer dependent on your cold charity.”

“But, Kitty, my darling, consider—”

Kitty Eldon drew herself haughtily away from her aunt’s detaining hand, and passed out of the door like a small embodiment of the spirit of defiance.

Out of the door! but, not until she had reached the corner of the street did impulsive Kitty pause to reflect where she was going.

“I wish I knew of some employment agency or intelligence bureau,” thought Kitty, with a strange sensation of loneliness. “Or, perhaps, I might buy a newspaper and see something among the advertisements.

This was an idea that seemed feasible, and Kitty drew out her little… 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?