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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 Peculiar Case—A Detective’s Story

There is a case that I will call to mind now that is rather a peculiar one, and that never was published yet. One day when I was in the office a fine-looking woman came in and said that her house had been robbed. Her name, she said, was McLoud, and she lived somewhere near Lefferts Park—Macon street or Monroe street, I don’t know which—anyway, it was in the locality of Lefferts Park, and she, her husband and two children, lived there in pretty good style. She reported that her bedrooms had been visited by a thief, and that the bureau had been visited by a thief, and that the bureau had been robbed of nearly $2,500 worth of jewelry. This jewelry was all her own—presents that she had received from her husband when she was married—and the jewels were kept in a little Japanese cabinet, which was also a present, and which for safety she locked in one of the upper bureau drawers. Well, I went to work on it, and supposed some second-story thief had been at work there, and, obtaining a full description of the jewelry, I started off to New York and Brooklyn pawn-offices trying to search up the goods but it was no use.

Mrs. McLoud was so anxious after the property that I did really make extraordinary efforts to… 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?