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 Detective's Story

by E. W. N.

“Yes, many a shrewd fellow has been trapped because of some habit of expression that gave him away,” said Hal Todd, one night as we sat in his office. “Jim West is an instance of that,” he added. “Did I ever tell you about him?”

“No, never heard of him,” was the response; “give us the story,” and we settled ourselves comfortably, for a man like Hal Todd cannot be on the police force ten years and a detective twenty more without having a stock of yarns worth listening to.

“I think it was in the fall ’80. I came home one night from Chicago all fagged out. I hoped I would not have a call to leave town for at least week. Slept late next morning, and was just eating breakfast when a dispatch came from Briggs, who has a big factory up in Monroe county; said his safe had been robbed of $8000 and valuable papers; wanted me to come or send a good man at once.

“I wired him to keep particulars quiet as he could; that I’d leave on next train.

“When I got to Rochester, had half a mind to turn back, but heard such mixed up rumors of the affair I got interested; and once you get interested you forget to be sick, tired or anything else. After… 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?