The News

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

A Mail Robber Trapped

Danger of Using Plug Tobacco

[From the Chicago Post]

The mysteries connected with the Post Office Department of the Government are numerous, and some of them border on the marvelous. The diaries of retired physicians and venerable lawyers may contain strange adventures and romantic incidents, but they can scarcely equal, in fruitful subjects and interesting details, the experience of some of the detectives of the postal service. And if they did, the revelations could never be made public, for the seal of eternal secrecy is placed upon the mouths of honorable professional gentlemen; while the detective, when his ends have been accomplished, is free to relate not only the crimes, but the names of the criminals, and the minutest particulars regarding their developments.

A special detective connected with the Chicago Post Office some time ago “worked up” a case, and brought it to a successful termination, which has in it many elements which are calculated to impress themselves in a marked manner upon the minds of those who peruse this article. A registered letter was forwarded to this city, which ought to have contained five one hundred dollar bills. But when the envelope was opened the money was missing. As is usual in such cases, the matter was placed in the hands of an experienced and skillful gentleman assigned to the duty of bringing criminals to justice, with instructions to make a thorough and rigid investigation. The task was one well calculated to baffle the skill of even these experts in the art of detecting crime. The envelope arrived here intact, and to all appearances had not been tampered with in the least. What, then, could be done? There was not the slightest clue, and the detective finally abandoned the matter in despair of success.… 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?