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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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A Piece of Deception

Many years ago, Alexandria was a refuge for half the runaway swindlers, robbers, and assassins of Europe. It was, in fact (the viceroy will pardon the strength of the expression), the sink of all the rascality of the Eastern and Western Worlds.

Among the rogues and escrocs who made Egypt the land of their adoption, two scoundrels especially attracted my attraction. These persons (the one of Prussian, the other of French extraction) were both gentlemen in appearance and conversation, — chevaliers d’industrie by trade. The former, James Vauler, was a converted Prussian Jew; the latter, M. Ernest, had lived several years in Paris, and claimed French protection. What the prefect of police in Paris thought of these two worthy men I never heard; but I strongly suspect that a change of climate had become necessary for their health. It soon became certain to me that they had taken high degrees in the blackleg schools of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Vauler was a pink-and-white man, with glossy, black, scented whiskers, and large dark eyes full of a smiling and false frankness: Ernest, a sallow little man, had a keen, sharp glance, and a smart, alert, businesslike manner. They were both great talkers, and sang in a fervid, semi-operatic way.

They arrived from Paris via Marseilles. The first glitter of their diamond rings secured them credit, and produced a general impression, that commercial magnates of enormous wealth and immaculate honesty had arrived to give a new impetus to the trade of Alexandria. They, Arcades ambo, got invited to one or two places, their shallow accomplishments, and the fluency with which they spoke French and Italian, soon making them the talk of all the marriageable… 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?