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

A Mysterious Sketch

Nearly opposite the church of St. Sebald in Nuremberg, stands an ancient inn, narrow and lofty, with an indented gable, small dusty casements, and the roof surmounted by a plaster image of the Virgin. Many years ago, when beginning the world as a young artist, I took up my abode in this quaint hostelry. I had come to Nuremberg in order to study the works of the old masters; but, my funds running short, I was obliged to take portraits—and such portraits! Stout old ladies, each with her cat on her lap; rosy burgomasters, wigged and cocked-hatted, all plentifully and partially illuminated with ochre and vermillion.

At length this resource began to fail; and mine host, who at first had been all civility, began to importune me in a somewhat insolent manner for the amount of my bill.—One evening as I was passing up stairs to my attic, Master Rapp called after me: “Hallo! youngster, when are you going to pay me? Your bill now amounts to one hundred and sixty florins, ten kreutzers.—Pray, when am I likely to see the color of your money?”

I muttered some sort of indistinct reply, and hastening to my room, locked the door, and threw myself, dressed as I was,… 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?