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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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Leaves from the Portfolio of a Practicing Lawyer

The Bracelet

By Henry Legare

‘Save her! for the love of Heaven, sir, save her! she is innocent, I am sure she is innocent!’ passionately exclaimed a young man, the expression of whose features gave additional force to his words.

‘I hope I may be able to do so, Duncan,’ replied his listener, a young lawyer, very little older however, than his client, ‘but I fear I cannot—the evidence is too strong. But I will try. Can you find anyone that will go her bail? You are not a house-keeper, and cannot.’

‘I do not know, sir,’ replied the client; ‘perhaps my employer, Mr. Murphy, may be willing to do so.’

‘You had better see him at once,’ said Mr. Hartley—that was the attorney’s name—‘for Mary, poor girl, ou’t not to suffer the contamination of a prison.’

‘She would die there, indeed she would!’ was the passionate answer, and at the thought the speaker burst into tears. ‘Mr. Hartley,’ he continued, ‘forgive me, my heart is broken!’

‘Do not despond, Duncan,’ said the other, feelingly and kindly; ‘all may yet be well—at least I hope so!’

‘You believe her guilty, sir, I am sure you do,’ exclaimed the one we have called Duncan; ‘but she is not, indeed she is not.’

‘I don’t know what to believe,’ replied the lawyer, ‘I cannot conceive any motive for the offence.’

‘And today we were to have been married,’ thus soliloquized the young man. ‘It is too, too horrible!’

‘Do not despond, Duncan,’ said Hartley; ‘rather meet this untoward event with fortitude. Go, my good fellow, bring Mr. Murphy here. I will endeavor to persuade him to become her security.’

‘I will, sir,’ replied the client. ‘He shall be here in half an hour.’

‘In the meantime Mary will arrive,’ said Hartley. ‘I told the officer who had her in… 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?