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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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Patchwork

“It does make me feel ashamed, I declare,” said Mrs. Halford; “the idea of Zebulon’s grandma asking Mrs. Lemuel Lawson for a piece of her new cambric for patchwork. You should have seen Mrs. Lawson’s eyes as she answered:

“‘Oh, certainly, madam,’ and offered her the scissors to cut it off herself; and Zebulon’s grandma said: ‘Thanky; I’ll take jest the least tenty piece, lest you mightn’t have a good patron.’ Yes, she said ‘patron.’ Oh, Amelia, it did make me so angry.”

“I don’t think it was anything so very dreadful, Frances,” said the more placid Amelia. “I’m sure your Zebulon’s grandma is a very nice old lady; and who is Mrs. Lawson, I’d like to know?—a flaunting thing, with rouge on her cheeks, not half so respectable as good, clean Grannie Hardbake.”

“Oh, Amelia,” said Mrs. Halford, “can’t you see the difference between people yet? Mrs. Lawson is at the very top of the ladder, has been in the highest society abroad, has photographs of princesses and duchesses that were her bosom friends, and puts up at the St. Bridget Hotel when she’s in New York. You know Cousin Kate is there, and I took grandma to see her, and Mrs. Lawson, who had been shopping, came in to show us her purchases. She’s ever so sociable with Kate; often lunches with her there. Why do you say ‘no doubt,’ and laugh? You’d like everybody to be chimney-sweeps, no doubt. You’ve the spirit of Jack Cade.”

“Gracious! Frances,” cried Amelia; “how you go on! I’m sure I like wealth and style and good birth as well as you do; but though she may wear velvet and diamonds, and board at the St. Bridget, Mrs. Lawson is a vulgar woman; and if she despises Zeb’s grannie—”
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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?