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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

A Curious Stratagem

by James F. Franklin

I had been some years connected with the Detective Bureau (so the thief-taker commenced his story), and had naturally arrived at a great degree of proficiency in the calling at the time when the strange matter occurred which forms the basis of my story. The chief officer of the Bureau called me to his private office one day, and without prefacing his words in any manner, began as follows:

“Guillot, I wish you to listen to what I am about to say with the utmost attention, for the service upon which I am about to detail you must be most thoroughly understood by you.”

I bowed and he continued:

“Perhaps you may have heard of the name of Jacques Guichard?”

Before replying, I took a memorandum book from my pocket and examined it thoroughly.

“No such name figures in my books,” I at last replied. “I have here an alphabetical list, in which I will affirm there are the names of all the notorious rogues in Paris—each and every one of them has his place in this book—but Guichard is not among them. Still, the name sounds familiar—I must have heard it at some time.”

“You have, without doubt; although I cannot say that its owner was ever within ten leagues of Paris. Jacques Guichard is a most extraordinary man, although a common thief, or he could never have thwarted the extraordinary efforts that have been made to capture him, as he has done. His place of operation is the seacoast and the country in the vicinity of St. Malo, and there he flourishes in the most extraordinary manner. The audacity of the man, according to all accounts, almost passes belief; his robberies have been for the past year extensive and heavy, and I am informed that all attempts thus far to arrest him have been utterly fruitless; for he has a strange faculty of trifling with, and eluding all who are sent after him… 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?