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

The Hotel Thief

A Curious Incident

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

A few evenings since, a small party of us were assembled in a snug parlor, discussing the various topics of the day. We had run the “Hard Times” till nothing more was to be said upon the subject, and then we turned our attention to the criminal cases detailed in the various newspapers. There were thefts, robberies, murders, arsons, and all sorts of misdeeds brought before us, and we gave them such consideration as we could afford.

“Speaking of thefts,” remarked one of the party, “puts me in mind of a curious circumstance that once happened in my own house. I will relate it if you choose to hear it.”

The speaker’s name was Barton—“Uncle Sim” we always called him—his Christian name being Simeon. He was well advanced in years, and had been engaged in hotel-keeping during most of his life. We were anxious to hear his story, and he related it as follows:—

“Something over twenty years ago, I kept a hotel in the western part of this State. The location was a good one, for there was considerable travel, but I had many good boarders.

“It was somewhere near the first of July, along towards evening, that a splendid carriage drew up at my door, and as the driver leaped from his seat, he asked one of my men to come and help him. The carriage was opened, and a young girl—a bright, pretty thing, not over fifteen—was the first to alight. After this, the driver reached in, and, with the assistance of my porter, handed out the sickliest looking man for a traveller, I had ever seen. He was tall and bent, and seemed more like a living skeleton than a thing of flesh and blood. The bones were all clearly defined, through 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?