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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 Detective Story

by Rebecca Forbes

I met with a strange, genial, talkative old gentleman one day, who told me a story which seems too good to be withheld from an appreciative public.

“That is a love sick couple over there,” he observed, indicating a pair of rustics that were just off on their bridal tour. “It reminds me of a certain experience in my life, which, until this moment, I have not alluded to for years.”

“What was it?” I asked. “Something rich I am sure, from your comical expression.”

“Yes, very rich. So rich, in fact, that I was completely sold for nothing. However, I will give it to you and let you judge.

“When I was a youngster of one-and-twenty I was crazy to become a detective. I had read a great many stories and novels where detectives figured conspicuously. I had caught boys stealing apples, negroes robbing hen roosts, and several other little affairs, which gave me the idea that I was especially designed for that calling. I spoke to my father about it, but he laughed at me. However that did not discourage me. I became acquainted with a detective, and, though he was not as sanguine of my success in the future, as I was, he offered to assist me. I became on friendly terms with him, and hope flourished finely for a while.

[‘“]Well, my boy,[’] he said to me one day, [‘]I think there is something which you may do, and if you accomplish it you will earn a five hundred dollar reward.[’]

[‘“]What is it?[’] I asked.

[‘“]A rich old merchant in W——— is… 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?