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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

The Torn Bill

by G. D. K.

It was in the spring of 1864 that the incidents which I am about to relate occurred. I was at that time postmaster in the town of L—. An unusually warm spell of weather had carried away much of the snow, left the roads very muddy, and rendered the traveling very bad. I thought of this as I closed the shutters about nine o’clock in the evening, and also remembered that, as it was Wednesday, the stage from C— was due at eight, but owing to the bad going it was not yet in. I therefore determined that I would, as I had often done before, lock the front door and the door between the inner and outer rooms, and, leaving a light burning, go to sleep, trusting to the driver to wake me by rattling the door.

It seemed but a few moments, so soundly had I slept, ere I was awakened by a pounding on the door. Glancing at the clock, which stood opposite, I discovered, however, that it was one o’clock in the morning, and that I had been asleep nearly four hours. As I hurried toward the door, I put my hand into my pocket for the key and found it was empty. The two door keys and both the keys of my safe, all of which I had when I went to sleep, were gone. Stepping to the rear door, in the lock of which I always kept the key, I also found that locked and the key gone. This so surprised me that for a few seconds I remained on the spot, utterly unable to do anything to solve the mystery.

From this state I was aroused by renewed pounding on the door. There was but one available mode of exit from my prison, and that was through a side window. Throwing up the sash I sprang out and hurried round to where I expected to find the driver. Mysteries seemed to have no end, for instead of meeting the driver, I came upon an excited crowd of about twenty. My appearance was the signal for all to commence telling me the cause of their excitement. Silence was, however, at last obtained, and… 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?