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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

A Little Mistake

You would be somewhat surprised at learning what was the cause of the suppressed excitement in the faces of the group assembled in the rooms of the decorous and lady-like lady principals in the young ladies’ seminary at —, now in the midst of the term, which had so far elapsed with the greatest éclat.

The simple fact was that two of the teachers had assumed a defiant attitude. They were not disposed to yield their plans and their rights, or at least what they felt were their plans and rights, and they stood now in the centre of the group in their jockeys, revenge glaring in their eyes, traitors acknowledged to the laws of the institution which they had resolved should be obeyed while they were stationed there. Or they said so at least, or their names should be cast aside; or at least, at very least, erased from the books of the institution, as it now stood before the world.

They wore a very martial appearance, these two young ladies, for they neither came back to their central position, nor were loyal and resigned to yield the position and place they occupied. They had indeed just been expressing themselves, giving their opinions, and demanding the help they needed, and at the very time they were standing, as we saw them, with heads set for victory, and with faces with their features all tangled in the mazes of doubts and triumphs.

But they had their faces set as I should have said. They were determined not to waver, and they did not.

It was in a school near Philadelphia they were teaching. They knew something of the social spirit that existed there—in that city—and it was their ardent attempt to defy that spirit that kept up the fire of defiance in their eyes. But the words they used, their arguments and special pleadings had their effect.

The opposition seemed to subside. The other teachers, and there were several in the… 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?