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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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Story of a Vase

The Tragedy with Which It Was Connected

George S Goodwin stood with his back to the fire-place and one hand in his pocket, thinking. When his two hands were strong he usually had them both in his pockets, but on this evening one hung in a sling, broken. Half an hour before his wife had departed for church with Mr. and Mrs. Whittier, their next-door neighbors, and shortly afterwards the servants had gone, presumably to church, too. So for once the master of the house was in complete possession. And every few moments he reached over with his left hand and gently stroked the one in the sling and muttered: “It’s jolly painful, I know,” and then fell to thinking again.

Although late in the autumn, no fire burned in the grate. But Goodwin felt just a little lonesome, and second nature drew him to the fire-place for comfort. When a man is lonesome a fire, if it does not actually cheer him, at least is very companionable, and when there is no fire a person must just put up with the place where a fire should be. So Goodwin backed up to the empty grate, looked at the ceiling, gazed slowly round the room for something to interest him, then down at his toes and leaned back… 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?