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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 Detective's Story

by Frank Lee Benedict

“The neatest case that ever came under my personal knowledge?” questioned Detective Sparkle, in a meditative tone.

I nodded, looking interested in advance.

“Well, I don’t know that I could decide as to that, on the spur of the moment, but I’ll tell you one that ranks high on my list of tidy things. It happened ten years ago, and the only person to whom I promised secrecy is dead. The truth was kept so quiet that nobody except the people concerned would recognize the facts, even if you put them in a story; and what’s more, nobody that read it would ever believe but what you made the thing up out of your own head.”

Mr. Sparkle indulged in a brief meditation, apparently collecting his memories, and presently began his narrative, in these words:

“I was summoned one morning from Scotland Yard to go to the residence of Colonel Helstone, near Kensington Gardens. It was the finest house in the street, standing in grounds of its own, with a carriage-drive in front, hen-houses and grape-vines in the rear, and every other outward sign of wealth and luxury.

“I rang the bell, and when I mentioned my name to the servant who opened the door, he said that Mr. Helstone was expecting me; but I saw by the expression on his face that he had no idea of my identity, or of the business that brought me there.

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?