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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 Detective’s Trick

The series of burglaries which startled the public in the autumn and early winter of the year 186- was of a description to alarm any household. The general features of each robbery were the same. In each case a gang of from seven to eleven masked men had broken into an isolated dwelling containing an unusual amount of silver or jewels; had intimidated the inmates by threatening them with fire-arms; mastered them, secured them, gagged them, then quietly proceeded methodically to strip the house of all the valuables it contained.

My own position filled me with anxiety. My house is six miles from town, set in the centre of wide grounds, remote from any habitation but the gardener’s cottage at the gate. Both my wife and myself had inherited a large amount of bulky family plate. Had my own wishes been carried out every ounce of silver and every jewel we owned would have been sent into town to my bankers’, but my wife objected, laughed at my apprehensions, and begged me not to worry.

But I continued to worry, and perplexed myself with conflicting plans for safety, and one day while in town I went to the head-quarters of the police, and inquired for Betts, the detective engaged on this case.

“Bye the bye,” said he, after we had talked a few moments, “how many servants have you, Mr. Powers? Please tell me about them individually.”

I went over their names, and the detective checked them off in his memorandum-book as I gave the facts connected with them. Saunders, the butler had been with us seventeen years; the cook, five years; coachman and groom, seven; and the chambermaid, three – all fixtures in the household but Marie, my wife’s maid, who had come within the last four weeks.

“Ah!” exclaimed Betts, “where did you get Marie? Was she well recommended?”

“Oh yes; she is French, and has just come to this country with a family by the… 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?