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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

In the Maguerriwock

by Harriet Prescott Spofford

Mr. Furbush was waited upon one morning by a client, and requested to take charge of a case that was rather out of his usual beat, as he said. And though its being a good instance of mysterious disappearance, with almost nothing to start from, gave it an immediate interest to his inquisitive mind, yet the investigation, being located upon an almost uncivilized region of the frontier forest, made it a much less agreeable study than was the same line of cases when they could be worked up in the pleasant purlieus of the city, and involved no greater hardships than attendance at the opera houses and in the drawing rooms of fashionable ladies.

“But,” said the client, “I think it will really be worth your while. The fee will be such-”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Furbush, “but I am not so young as I was. I have a liking for my easy-chair. Perhaps my scent is not so keen as once-”

“On the contrary, habit has made it perfect.”

“No dog for the chase like an old one? Well, let me have the data,” said Mr. Furbush, rather pleased than otherwise—for the truth was he had been getting a little rusty—taking an enormous pinch of snuff, and then filliping his fingers till he seemed to be throwing dust in the eyes of the universe.

“Listen then,” said his interlocutor. “Ten years ago a pack-peddler went through the town of Boltonby—the last large town in that part of the State, and the last town at all before you reach the Maguerriwock district—he stopped at the watchmaker’s there, and exhibited the contents of his pack, a small pack, but full of valuables. There were watches and bracelets and gold chains in it; brooches set with pearls; there were carbuncles and amethysts and many marketable stones variously set—it was decidedly a precious pack on the whole; and though the watchmaker lightened it of sundry articles, he made it heavy… 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?