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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

Bicornet’s Murder Case

A rival of the Paris Figaro, envious probably of the superior prosperity of that famous though not most reliable of journals, tells with much unction the following story of one of its reporters:

News was received at the Figaro office of the commission of a horrible crime. Bicornet, which may be accepted as French slang for our national “Johnny Fresh,” was dispatched in red-hot haste and a cab to the scene of the tragedy. All the Figaro reporters travel in hacks. It looks big, and the Hack Companies take it out in advertising.

“A woman has been assassinated here?” he demanded of the porter, visibly impressed by his visitor’s dignity and the equipage.

“Yes, Monsieur, I suppose you are a member of the police come to investigate it.”

“Do I look like an idiot? I am a reporter. Here is my card.”

“Very good, sir. Will you give yourself the trouble to ascend to the third floor? The Commissionary was here an hour ago and will be back again to-day.”

“My friend, the Commissionary may do whatever he –– pleases. I am Bicornet, whose superior keenness has so often vexed and stunned the police. Only wait and you shall have some… 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?