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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

Select Story

Leaf the Fourteenth

An Adventure with Italian Brigands

by John B. Williams, M.D.

The reader must not suppose that a detective’s life is made up only of adventures and hunting after criminals. We, as well as the rest of mankind, have our social hours, and I verily believe it has been my lot to meet with as many friends as anyone in a similar position in society. I had not resided long in New York before I became acquainted with some capital fellows. We formed a little social circle, and used to meet weekly at each others’ houses, where we passed the time most agreeably, relating adventures, telling stories, and playing chess. In the present number it is my intention to give to the reader an adventure which happened to one of my friends.

On the evening that he related it to us there were six of us met together. It was Henry Seldon’s turn to tell some event in his life. The night was drawing on apace, and the cozy appearance of our friend Melville’s study seemed to invite mutual confidence. It was a December evening, and an unusual silence reigned, broken only by the rumbling of an occasional omnibus as it rolled down the street. The air was chilly and cold outside; but inside a delightful warmth pervaded the whole apartment.

“… 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?