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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 Lost Jewel

A Detective’s Experience

I have never seen so perfect a specimen of feminine beauty as that of Delia Howard. She was just on the verge of her young womanhood when I knew her first. Petite in form, yet with a physical development so singularly lovely that even in a fashionable theatre, crowded with the beauty and refinement of a city, she would have been singled out as an object of peculiar admiration. Her blonde features and golden hair were made brilliant and noticeable by the large black eyes that were fathomless in their intense light. Large and lustrous they were indeed, full of beauty that fascinated while it maddened you. She was an orphan niece of Mr. Howard, whom he had reared as his child. “Until recently,” said Mr. F—— “she had repaid his kindness with affection, and even up to the event which owed none of its favor and sincerity to pretension.”

His own daughter was a different style of beauty, and with a haughty and imperious manner which repelled friendship and esteem. But she had hid under all that calm pride a heart quick to feel and passionate to resent real or supposed injury, her jealousy of her cousin disclosed. The admiration which the orphan everywhere excited maddened her, and I do not doubt that she had sworn in her fierce 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?