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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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$1,250,000; Or, the Private Mark

Money-Getting As Related To Crime — A Very Strange History — The Most Wondrous Pursuit Of A Man By His Enemy Which Ever (Probably) Was Known In The History Of The World — James William Hubert Rogers And “Ned” Hague, Two Englishmen — “Damon And Pythias” In Early Life — A Change Comes — A Departed And Considerate Uncle Described, Once A Protege Of The Emperor Of Austria — Oliver Cromwell Hague, A Rich India Merchant — A Marvelous Search For A Lost Man — A Man Found And Identified By Numerous Friends As The One In Question — Plotting And Counter-Plotting — A Shrewd Vermont ‘‘Lawyer” Makes A Thousand Pounds Sterling—The Indefatigable Rogers Comes To America In His Search — Lost In The Vastness Of The Country—We Meet, And Depart For St. Louis — Troubles, And An Enlightening Dream—A Wicked Lawyer — The Right To Repent— A Spirited Colloquy With The Lawyer —An Enemy Found And Set To Work—The Grasping Lawyer Outwitted— The Lost Found In A Terrible Condition — A Little Private Fun Over The Lawyer’s Discomfiture — A Sharp Examination And Cross-Examination— Lawyer Outwitted, And Loses Five Hundred Dollars — Mr. Rogers Departs With The “Lost One,” Bound For England — The Sudden Drowning Of The Latter At Sea — The Cherished Victory Of Years Vanishes—Out, With A Laugh.

by George McWatters

The "battle of life” has so many phases, and my own experiences have run in so many channels, and my knowledge of human curiosity is so extensive, and my desire in these papers to gratify the same so great, that I am at a loss, as I turn over my diaries and notes of other histories of the past years to-day, what to select from my notes next; for, whatever disposition my publishers may make of this in the arrangement of these chapters, this is really one of the very last of them all in the order… 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?