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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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A Bit of Detective-Office Romance

by Allan Pinkerton

Of the tens of thousands of strange and interesting incidents connected with prolonged and far-reaching detective service, undoubtedly that portion containing the richest veins of romance, the brightest humor, and the deepest pathos, is comprised in the demands made on the detective agency for numberless kinds of assistance by men and women who are unfortunate enough to become complicated in family troubles involving the supposed unfaithfulness of the husband or the wife.

I wish to say, at the beginning of this bit of romance, that I am bitterly and irrevocably opposed to touching that kind of work. No honest and honorable detective will soil his hands with it. For thirty years, and through hundreds of thousands of applications for the services of myself and my men, I have shunned and avoided it for the unclean, poisonous thing that it is. In all modesty, and for the purity and honor of the detective service of America, as one who has spent the best half of his life in its elevation and bettering, I wish to, here and at all times, urge upon those younger and less experienced than myself, who may be at the threshold of their life-work, the absolute necessity of turning a deaf ear to applications for this class of assistance.

There may be, there often are, exceptions in this regard, where men 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?