The News

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

Select Story

A Reporter’s Romance

Walter Condon and I—reporters for two morning newspapers in the city of New York—were nearing the end of our long round of visiting police stations in search of news, as the clocks were making ready to strike twelve. Turning out of Pearl Street, where the bitter wind of this January midnight was drifting fine icy snow into our chilled faces, the green signal lanterns before the door of our last station showed us a hospital ambulance standing there. Hastening to enter, we found lying on the floor of the back office, with an ugly wound in his head, a man whose face we had often seen in the cell for thieving, and whose business was to peddle sweet meats among the concert saloons and sailors’ resorts existing in such terrible abundance between Chatham Street and the East River. The surgeon thought the man would not live, but ordered him removed to a hospital. At that moment the front door was opened timidly, and a small voice asked, “Please, sir, is he dead?”

“No, he a’n’t croaked yet, but he will ’fore long,” answered the glum doorman. Then, seeing the scared, pitiful little face, he added, more kindly, “What do you want with old Baldwin, anyhow?”

… 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?