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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 Juror’s Testimony

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

I know there are some of my readers who will remember very well the leading circumstances of the story I am about to tell.— I allude to the trial of Ezra Larrabee for theft. But I doubt if there are many who understand the influence that was brought to bear upon the jury in making up of their verdict. The chief actor in the scene has passed away, honored and respected by all who were admitted to his friendship; and I deem it no impropriety now to make public those circumstances which, to most people, have thus far been only a matter of gossip and speculation.

At the September Term of our Supreme Judicial Court, in the year 1849, I chanced to be a member of the first petit jury, and on the third day of the session, after we had disposed of two or three cases of ordinary importance, we were called to sit upon the case of the Commonwealth against Ezra Larrabee. And this was by far the most exciting case that had been presented for trial for a long time. The circumstances, as understood by the public, were as follows:

Ezra Larrabee was one of the most respectable and honored men of our town. He was about five-and-forty years of age; a stout, fair-faced, warm-hearted, impulsive man; and was by occupation a draughtsman. He had a wife and three children; and if he had a real fault that society could put its finger upon, it was that he did not exhibit a proper energy in providing for his family. He had once been very dissipated—so much so that he was at one time fairly in the gutter; and what made his dissipation worse, he had contracted a fondness for gambling. He did not seem to gamble for the purpose of gain, but simply from the impulse of a blind passion induced by drink.

At lengthy the great Washingtonian wave swept our way, and among the first of the redeemed ones was Ezra… 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?